


in the dark

by nilchance



Series: ain't this the life [33]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Body Horror, Multi, SpicyKustard, Underfell Papyrus (Undertale), Underfell Sans (Undertale), detailed content warnings in endnotes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:20:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 48,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22351717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nilchance/pseuds/nilchance
Summary: Sans can’t just give up this time, and he can’t do this by himself.
Relationships: Papyrus/Sans (Undertale), Sans/Sans (Undertale)
Series: ain't this the life [33]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/896544
Comments: 972
Kudos: 693





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> detailed content warning in endnotes

When Sans comes back from a long stretch of staticky nothingness, there’s cool tile under his cheek. His head hurts. Everything hurts. He’s on the floor, breathing in ugly gasps. There’s an awful taste in his mouth like corroded batteries. He can’t think. Something is wrong and he doesn’t know what. Something is wrong. Something is wrong. Something is--

Sans tries to get up. Barely manages to make his fingers twitch. Even that much makes a sickening wave of exhaustion roll over him. His soul seems to stutter in his chest. He only wants to go back to sleep.

“Paps,” Sans rasps, his voice wet and thick. 

Someone drives their foot into his ribs. The vicious force of it rolls him onto his side. It turns out his body had one last bit of energy left after all because it yanks the steering wheel out of his grip and he starts clumsily, sluggishly trying to get away. Too slow. They kick him again, hard enough that his back slams into the base of the fridge.

(they’ve killed him, he’s going to die like this, he’s not ready, it isn’t fucking fair, he just kissed Edge, Red will be so pissed at him, his brother, his _brother_ )

As his panicked mind scrabbles at mortality, he desperately checks himself like that will stave death off and goes still. His HP is fine. He’s at 1. Not even a decimal point of damage. 

Like it’s just a bad dream.

Sans looks up.

Gaster stands above him, vindictively satisfied. For a moment, he could almost be the man Sans knew before he fell into the Core. He looks like himself, the crisp white lab coat unsoiled by blood or tears, the latex gloves on all his hands to keep them spotlessly clean. Then a drop of black fluid drips from one socket. One of Gaster’s hands delicately wipes it away.

With an economic gesture, Gaster pulls the soul out of his own chest. 

Or Sans thinks it’s a soul. It’s gone wrong, squatting in Gaster’s palm like something rotten. It’s coated in the same black fluid that Gaster is bleeding, that _Sans_ is bleeding. Instead of emitting light, it seems to draw it out of the space around it. There’s a very faint smell like meat that’s gone off.

Gaster swipes his thumb over the soul, wiping away the fluid. Sans doesn’t want to watch this. He can’t tear his eyes away. Beneath the protective layer of fluid, Gaster’s soul is the sickly, translucent white of creatures from deep in the ocean that have never seen the sun.

It’s cracked. More cracked than Red’s, broken like a teacup someone dropped off the side of a mountain. That black fluid fills every seam, holding it all together. Gaster’s soul shudders in his hand as it throbs quickly, erratically, like a small panicked creature, like the hammering of Sans’s soul in his chest. 

Their souls are beating in perfect time.

(The experiments to induce soul cracks, making room for that black fluid they’re both bleeding. Gaster somehow finding Sans in an infinite void. Gaster reaching into his nightmares, tearing the soul from his chest again and again like he was reclaiming stolen lab equipment. The hallucinations where they seem to step sideways into a place that no one else can see. Sans’s soul breaking for the first time when Gaster fell into the Core. Their souls beating together as one.)

(The fall into the Core that Gaster survived. Six years without food or water, and yet Gaster isn’t dust.)

(Like a parasite that survives off the body of its host.)

Numbly, Sans says, “What did you do?”

Gaster takes a step towards him, and Sans struggles weakly to get away from that twisted thing in Gaster’s hand. If it touches him, his soul will just give out in sheer horror. He thinks of his nightmares of Gaster wrenching the soul from his chest, he thinks of Gaster pressing their souls together and that black fluid worming into the cracks where Sans can never claw it out, and he distantly hears his own voice rising in volume and panic as Gaster’s reaching hand moves towards his chest until the words are a meaningless blur of sound: “no no no nonono _no_ \--”

Furious red light arcs from the collar to Gaster’s hand with a loud, vicious snap. Sans can’t tell if it does damage, but Gaster yanks his hand back like it was burned. He stares down at Sans with familiar annoyance, the same expression he would make when the pain of the procedures got to be too much and Sans couldn’t stay mute and motionless as a doll. 

Sans is off his game, still struggling to think past the post-seizure sludge of exhaustion. His expression must betray his brief flicker of hope because Gaster deigns to actually speak. _Do you really think they can keep you from me? You’ve become sentimental in my absence._

Right on cue, Red appears in the doorway to the kitchen. The dog has Red’s bootlaces in his teeth and is tugging furiously, pulling him forward. Red is freaked out enough that he can’t quite hide it. He doesn’t react to Gaster, or Sans on the floor. He looks through them like they’re not even there. Like the planetarium, when Red didn’t see Gaster or feel Sans’s trembling even though it was happening right beside him.

Seeing Red’s lack of reaction, the dog whines a little. He lets go of Red’s laces and inches forward, touching his cold nose to Sans’s outstretched fingers. He’s careful not to get too close to Gaster, darting looks at him that are somehow both wary and furious. The lick he gives Sans’s hand seems apologetic. 

“Good boy,” Sans says thickly. “You did good. S’okay.”

Red tilts his head like he’s hearing distant music, his frown deepening. The dog wags hesitantly, his tail ticking like the pendulum of a clock. Then he backs out of the kitchen, trotting off after something.

Sans stretches out an arm, gritting his teeth through the pain of his ribs, but he can’t quite reach Red from here. He drags himself forward across the tiles by his fingertips, only managing a couple centimeters, but Red is already moving further out of reach. Sans can hear Red stomping up the stairs two at a time, calling, “Boss?”

Sans coughs out a despairing sound, half sob and half laugh. It freezes in his throat when he sees the thoughtful expression on Gaster’s face as he stares after Red. Gaster looks down at Sans and muses, _Perhaps I’ve been wasting my time. He’s stronger than you are. Now that I’ve refined the medication protocol, he could be of great use to me as a battery._

The frantic ticking of Sans’s overclocked mind just… stops. The clarity that comes in the silence that follows is like the stars on a night so cold that every breath hurts. For a moment, Sans is back in that other Snowdin, about to scatter Al’s dust across the snow. 

Gaster is right. When it comes to magical reserves and relative sturdiness, Red is a much better choice. And of course Gaster would underestimate how viciously Red would fight him every step of the way. So if Gaster could have redirected his attention to Red, he would have by now. Which means he can’t. Not yet. Maybe he can only get to Sans.

Gaster fell into the Core because he was too arrogant to put up safety rails, and that same arrogance made him keep pushing when Sans’s back was already against the wall. He's making empty threats, lowering himself to something as crude as kicking Sans in the ribs like he’s shaking him down for lunch money. He doesn’t even realize that he fucked up and overplayed his hand.

He doesn't realize that he really needed Sans to stay more scared than he is angry.

With an unsteady hand, Sans feels his ribs. It hurts like a motherfucker. Two ribs are broken clean through-- no, three. There’s hot, angrily buzzing magic keeping them from just clattering to the floor like broken windchimes as soon as he moves. He’s holding together. It’s only pain.

So he gets up. It takes several tries, his body giving out on him and sending him crashing back to the floor, but he manages at the cost of some bruises. It’s fine; he’s pretty sure he already had one motherfucker of a bruise on his cheekbone from whacking his face on the floor when he seized, so what’s a few more?

 _What are you doing?_ Gaster demands when Sans is finally on his feet and clinging to the kitchen counter to stay upright on his dangerously wobbling legs. Gaster might’ve been asking that all along, but Sans wasn’t paying that much attention to him.

It’d only take a stiff breeze to put Sans back on the floor. But Gaster doesn’t touch him. He doesn’t even try.

There’s a clinging film of goop in Sans’s mouth. He spits at Gaster’s sensible black shoes, and Gaster recoils. Not quite far enough. A little of the spit hits the toe of his loafer and passes clear through, which confirms most of what Sans needs to know.

“You--” Sans’s voice is wobbling. Every breath hurts. He coughs out some goop and tries again, word by agonizing word. “You were scarier before you started talking. Now it’s just kinda sad.”

It’s worth the effort to see the flicker of outraged surprise on Gaster’s face, like he just got bitten by a lab rat that was supposed to be tame. Then Gaster’s eyes narrow. _There’s a great deal I can do to you here without killing you. I need you alive. Your limbs, on the other hand--_

“Sure. Fuck it. Break out the bonesaws. It’s not like there’s anything stopping you.” A palpable hit; Gaster’s expression darkens. Sans wheezes a painful laugh. “You already shot your physicality wad by breaking a couple of my ribs, huh? Guess that’s the trouble with using your strongest attacks first. Give it half an hour and maybe you can get it up again.”

Gaster’s hands start to shape furious words. Deliberately, Sans turns his face away, refusing to see whatever bullshit Gaster is trying to sell, and wipes his mouth on the back of his sleeve. The steady flow of void gunk seems to have stopped for the moment. His head feels stuffy and weird, but he’s not actively dripping out of all his face holes.

Sans pushes himself upright, wobbles a little, and takes a step towards the kitchen door. Another. Gaster moves into his path and says, _What is this ridiculous gesture meant to prove? What do you expect to--_

There’s probably more after that, but Sans doesn’t really give a fuck right now. He walks right through Gaster and finds nothing but empty air. No doubt that Gaster will make him pay for this later, maybe by ripping the soul right out of his chest, but he was gonna do that anyway. It doesn't matter. If Sans thinks about how goddamn scared he is, he'll crumple. One unsteady step at a time, he makes it to the living room and up the stairs, following the sound of Red and Edge’s raised voices. It takes a while; he has to keep stopping to brace himself against the wall and try desperately not to pass out. He doesn’t have a lot of gas in the tank on the best day, but at the moment he’s lurching along on fumes.

The universe has some shred of mercy for him, because Edge and Red drift out of his bedroom and meet him at the top of the stairs. The dog helps, insistently prodding Edge in the leg with his nose to herd him along. When he sees Sans, he gives an excited bark and seems very pleased with himself. Edge has one hand on the back of Red’s neck, over the collar, and he looks like he has a killer headache.

No. More to the point, Edge looks like Papyrus does after he has one of those mental glitches. There’s an angry scarlet mark on his cheek like Red smacked him. And Edge is being very careful to keep his hand on Red’s collar, like it’s keeping him tethered to something. 

To Sans.

(If the gaps in Papyrus’s memory left by Gaster’s erasure from the timeline were big enough that Papyrus almost tore himself apart trying to think around them, if Sans being stuck in this sideways place means Edge is struggling to remember him, then Papyrus must be…)

(Oh god, Papyrus.)

Impatiently, Red is saying, “I’m gonna go get Paps. This has gotta be fucking him up worse than you.”

“If Sans has been taken, you flinging yourself into the void for the doctor to find won’t help a goddamn thing,” Edge says. His voice is hoarse with pain and the effort of trying to remember Sans by sheer stubborn strength of will, like he can glare down the void until it slinks away with its tail between its legs. “You don’t even know where Papyrus is at the moment. You’re staying with me. I’m not losing track of you both.”

“What d’you want me to do, just stand here with my dick in my hand?” Red snaps. “Sans is--”

“Standing right here, jackass,” Sans says. It’s worth a shot. Might as well try to Occam’s Razor this shit.

Red doesn’t just talk over him, at least, but he doesn’t seem to understand the words loud and clear either. Eyes narrowing, he turns to Edge and asks, “Did you hear something?”

“No,” Edge says. His expression winched tighter as soon as Sans spoke, like he’s struggling to concentrate over the blaring of a fire alarm. He takes a step towards the stairs like he means to storm down them while hauling Red by the scruff, but he stops short of touching Sans. His frown deepens. “Something’s wrong.”

“No shit,” Red says. 

Red doesn’t move from the top of the stairs, his eyes fixed on Sans’s face even if he doesn’t seem to _see_ him. Holding onto the banister for dear life, Sans staggers closer to Red. Red doesn’t back up, but he tenses a little as Sans invades his personal space. Sans starts to touch Red’s hand and then stops, staring down at the goop clinging to his own fingers.

(If the goop is contagious, it’s too late. Red’s been fucking with the stain on that hoodie for weeks. But Gaster’s comment about medication protocols and the fact that Red isn’t already having nightmares and hallucinations implies that maybe Red isn’t completely screwed yet.)

(But if Sans is wrong about that--)

(Don’t think about it. Not now. Don’t think about how Gaster will make him pay for running his mouth, don't think about being forgotten by Edge forever, don’t think about Red on his knees puking black fluid, don’t think about Papyrus empty-eyed behind the wheel of a car, _don’t think about it_. Keep moving.)

In the end, Sans puts his hand on Red’s forearm where the jacket can protect him. Red draws in a sharp breath, his eyes unconsciously locking on Sans’s, but there’s no recognition. He’s not sure Sans is there. His eyes are telling him one thing, his instincts another.

“What is it?” Edge demands.

“Dunno,” Red says, staring into Sans’s eyes. “I think…”

Sans can feel Gaster’s presence behind him, too close. Watching. Listening. His spine prickles as cold sweat rolls down it like the proprietary fingertips of someone who never had a claim on him. There are spreading shadows at the corners of Sans’s vision and a weird staticky feeling in his skull like standing too close to the Core, a final warning from his body that he needs to lay the fuck down before he drives himself right into another seizure.

Sounding tense enough to snap, Edge asks, “Brother?”

“Gimme a second,” Red says, squinting as he tries to make out Sans like one of those Magic Eye puzzles. They’re close enough to kiss, if the thought of getting this filth in Red’s mouth didn’t make Sans want to gargle bleach.

Sans leans forward that last inch and rests his brow on Red’s shoulder, closing his eyes and trying to bribe his body into giving him a few extra seconds to work with if he just pretends to rest. Red’s jacket is unzipped; Sans slips his hand inside beneath the protective bulk of jacket where Gaster can’t see, praying with foxhole desperation that the t-shirt is thick enough to keep the semi-dried layer of void goop on his hand from soaking through to Red’s bones. He presses his cold, clumsy hand against Red’s ribs and writes three letters, one by one: _L-A-B_.

This is all he’s got. A pure desperation play. Ebott is miles away, and he’s not sure he can even make it back down the stairs. He can’t shortcut himself there; he’d just run out of gas and end up stranded in the void where Gaster could find him and do whatever he wanted. He has to trust that Red can get them all through a shortcut without being caught, and that maybe the shielding in the lab that’s meant to prevent any accidents from leveling the underground will be enough to keep Gaster’s weird brain-ghost bullshit out, at least for a while. It could buy them some time.

It’s a lot of hypotheticals. He really wishes he’d paid more attention to that safety briefing his first day as an intern. He wishes he could think straight right now. He wishes they’d had more time.

It’s not just his own life he’s risking, it’s Red’s and probably Edge’s too. But he doesn’t want to know what’ll happen if he gets stuck in this sideways place, what the absence of his memory will do to Papyrus’s mind. He doesn’t want to know how long the collar will keep Gaster from taking his soul when Edge is already struggling to remember him. He doesn’t want to know what Gaster will be able to do if ( _when_ ) he gets what he wants. 

Sans can’t just give up this time, and he can’t do this by himself.

 _L-A-B_ , he writes again, pressing the letters into Red’s bones like he can imprint them there. Nothing happens.

Sans mutters deliriously into Red’s shoulder, “C’mon, asshole. You c’n figure it out. Be the Demi to my Swayze. Got my hands all up in your pottery. It’s gonna take hours to scrub that clay off your pelvis when it dries. Romantic as hell.” _L-A-B_. Red is radiating tension under his hands, like a hunting dog straining at the end of their leash. _L-A-B_. Or at least Sans thinks that’s what he writes; it’s hard to tell when he can feel the lights in his mind going out one by one. He’s slurring his words. “We watched that movie, right? With the song. Lonely rivers flow to the sea, to the sea, to the open arms of the-- fuck, Red, please--”

Red yanks the door to the void open. 

It’s been so long since Sans felt the cold comfort of that nothingness embrace him. It’s like coming home. He holds onto Red, glad that his eyes are squinched shut tight so he can’t see if Gaster is coming for him. If he has faith in anything, it’s in Red and Edge and Papyrus, his fucked up little family, and all he can hope is that he didn’t just drag them all to hell with him.

Sans thinks he feels something snag his jacket, catching the hood by its ruff of goop-matted fur, and then it slips through their fingers.

And then he’s in the light again, the door slammed shut behind them. The world is too bright and too hot and too familiar. And too loud; before Sans orients to gravity and light existing again, Red immediately snarls a string of curses in his ear. Seeing as from Red’s perspective Sans materialized out of thin air and fell on him, Sans is lucky he doesn’t get shanked. Red grabs onto him, keeping him from hitting the floor, and Sans yelps like a kicked dog as Red’s arms tighten around his ribs. He doesn’t have any energy left for pride.

“Okay, I gotcha,” Red says as he immediately shifts his grip to something slightly less agonizing but doesn’t let go, holding Sans steady as he lowers him to the floor. Edge helps, his hands painfully gentle even though Sans thinks they’re trembling a little.

Once he’s on the floor, blinking dizzily up at their out-of-focus faces and trying to figure out if there’s something important he’s forgotten, Red starts unzipping Sans’s jacket. Well, Red’s jacket, technically. Sans hopes he isn’t real attached to it because these stains probably aren’t coming out. 

In a tone so terrifyingly calm that it’s almost flat, Red tells Edge, “He’s got that black stuff all over him. Looks like it bled out his face holes.” There’s a flash of scarlet magic, humming with a potential for violence that’s perversely comforting in its familiarity. Red uses his attack to cut through Sans’s shirt because fuck clothes today, apparently. Sans makes a vague protesting sound in the back of his throat, which Red ignores. “Broken ribs. Dunno how that didn’t kill him.”

“A problem for later,” Edge says, steady as a rock. They’re in no-bullshit crisis mode. Makes sense. Sans kinda feels like a crisis. “Call his brother. He’s better at healing than I am.”

“Don’ touch me,” Sans says about ninety seconds too late, the words rolling out thick over his tongue. “S’not safe.”

“Shut up, sweetheart,” Red says, his calm slipping just a little to show the raw emotion underneath. “He’s fine. He’s got gloves on.”

(But Red doesn’t.)

Stringing coherent thoughts together is hard, like he’s a preschooler trying to make a bracelet with those chunky letter beads, but if the preschooler was also really drunk for some reason. Sans swallows, grimacing at the taste in his mouth, and manages, “Y’can’t get it on my soul, okay?”

There’s some significant eye contact exchanged over his head. Red says, “Yeah. Anything else?”

Sans shakes his head, or maybe he just kinda twitches in a way that could generously be interpreted as a head shake.

“All right,” Red says. “Then quit backseat driving. He’s got this.”

Sans might’ve figured out a way to tell Red to go fuck himself via semaphore, but Edge’s hand settles on his brow, so warm it burns. A sweat breaks out over Sans’s bones, a wash of hot-cold-hot-cold that says he might be about to swoon like a virginal yet hot-tempered maiden in one of those books Red likes. Or maybe it’s just that they’re in good old Hotland. Red dropped them off right by the lab entrance, close enough to the automatic doors that they’re standing open and letting all the heat in. 

Finally, Sans remembers what he’s forgotten. Turning his head feels like some kinda metaphor for a really tiring thing that he’s ironically too tired to come up with, but he has to be sure. As Red pulls out his phone to call Papyrus, Sans looks out the door.

Gaster is standing there just beyond the doorway, staring at them. He would kill them all if he could, Sans thinks, just tear them into dust and then find a way to revive them so he could do it all over again. But Gaster doesn’t step through the threshold to finish what he started. Sans can see it in Gaster’s expression, the subtle tic at his temple and the teeth-grinding set of his jaw: he can’t come inside the lab.

Sans scrapes the very bottom of the barrel and finds just enough energy to give Gaster the finger. Then the door finally closes between them, and he lets his hand drop heavily to the floor.

“Paps? You okay?” Red says, and for a confusing few seconds Sans thinks he’s talking to Edge. Then he hears the distant, muffled sound of his brother’s voice coming through Red’s phone; Sans realizes belatedly that Papyrus answered by the second ring. Papyrus sounds clear and coherent and very, very angry.

He’s okay.

Relief is too small a word for what Sans feels. His soul isn’t enough to contain it. He closes his eyes, swallowing hard against tears as a delayed rush of adrenaline washes over him and leaves him trembling. Edge murmurs something to him, but Sans can’t make out the words. It’s okay. Even Papyrus would say he’s earned the right to pass out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: aftermath of a seizure; lots of body horror; unreality; Sans briefly thinks he's dying; broken bones; Gaster touches his soul in front of Sans and attempts to touch Sans's soul while Sans tells him no; reveal that Gaster has connected their souls somehow in order to stay alive and feed off Sans's magic reserves; Gaster tries to coerce Sans into compliance by threatening Red; threat of limb amputation, Sans is briefly removed from the timeline like Gaster and therefore Edge and Papyrus's memory, causing them both serious brain glitches; vomit mention; Red accidentally hurts Sans by compressing his broken ribs while trying to keep him from faceplanting.
> 
> I swear there will be an actual explanation for WTF is going on with Gaster at some point, but at the moment Sans doesn't know either, so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> detailed content warnings in the endnotes

Papyrus is locking up his classroom and getting ready to go home when things go wrong.

He’s not sure why it’s wrong, is the thing. The school is quiet. Everyone else has gone home for the evening, including the student who needed his sage advice and also some cookies he has stashed in his drawer in case of feelings emergencies. Nothing appears to be even a little on fire. 

Everything is absolutely fine. It’s just that he can’t breathe through the panic. It’s like someone has taken his soul in their fist and is squeezing harder and harder until it cracks.

( _A hesitant voice, familiar as the back of his hand: ”Are you having nightmares about somebody, uh, trying to touch your soul?”_ )

The world stutters.

Papyrus is kneeling on the floor. He’s not sure how he got there. There is a crushing pain in his chest and throat, and his breaths are coming in deep wheezing gasps. He doesn’t even have to breathe, and so it’s ridiculous to feel like he’s going to run out of air. 

He tells himself to stop it. He doesn’t have time to lollygag. He has to get home. There will be pizza. He wants to know how the trip went. He wants to see his--

( _”Brother, I don’t want to talk to you right now.”_

_If Papyrus doesn’t talk to Sans, if he just stays under the bed in the lab, no one will be able to tell that he’s still crying like a babybones. The tears have gone on long enough that he’s headachy and stuffy and honestly exasperated with himself, but just when he thinks they’ve dried up, he remembers the little snap of bone as he broke Sans’s finger, and the waterworks start up all over again._

_“Yeah, I get that,” Sans says. With a grunt, he stretches out on the floor beside the bed. Pointedly, Papyrus rolls over and puts his back to Sans, and he thinks he hears Sans sigh. “You mind if I just stay here for a minute? I’m beat.”_

_“Yes, I imagine it must be very tiring to lie all the time,” Papyrus snips._

_A long silence stretches out before Sans says, “I’m sorry, Paps.”_

_“You said that.”_

_“Yeah, well, I should keep saying it.”_

_“You made me hurt you,” Papyrus says. His voice is small._

_“I know,” Sans says. “I fucked up. I won’t ask you to do that ever again. I promise.”_

_There’s something in his voice that Papyrus has never heard before, tugging at Papyrus’s soul until he gives up and rolls over to face Sans again. Sans looks utterly miserable, like he’s been crying too. He never lets Papyrus see him cry._

_Searching Papyrus’s face, Sans winces just a little. “Yeah, okay. You want some space? I can--”_

_Papyrus sniffs, a thick and deeply gross sound, and then scooches over until their shoulders are touching. It means “I forgive you.” From the way Sans takes his hand and squeezes gently, his broken finger healed good as new by the feeding tube, he knows Sans understands._ )

The world stutters.

Papyrus looks down at the blood on his shirt, bright little droplets. He has to rinse it in cold water if he wants to get out the stains. He _likes_ this shirt.

His head hurts like someone has reached long fingers into his eyesocket and is pulling thoughts out one by one like they’re pieces of candy from the bowl in Toriel’s office. They’re taking too much. There will be nothing left of him, only emptiness. 

“You can’t have him,” Papyrus says. His voice is thick and clogged from the blood trickling steadily out of his voice, and it sounds like he’s been weeping. He doesn’t even know who he’s speaking to or who is being taken from him. “You can’t--”

( _”-- keep doing this,” Papyrus blurts._

_He knows it’s a mistake even before Gaster looks up from his computer to stare coldly at him. It’s never a good idea to tell the doctor that he can’t do things, particularly when Papyrus has no way to actually stop him aside from asking nicely._

_“Please,” Papyrus adds belatedly. “It’s just… he’s got another fever, a bad one this time, and--”_

_**Raising his maximum HP will be worth a few unpleasant side effects,** Gaster says. Like he always does. **It won’t just help him. It will save countless lives. Your brother is smart enough to understand that.**_

_The implication that Papyrus isn’t smart enough is not particularly subtle._

_“I know,” Papyrus says. Without him paying attention, his hands have crept together and are anxiously wringing themselves. “But these pills don’t seem to be, um, working very well? So maybe he could have a couple days off to give you time to do science-y things and figure out something different? Maybe a week? I know you’re very busy and important, of course, I don’t want to rush you.”_

_He honestly expected Gaster to mercifully cut off his rambling as soon as he got to ‘the pills aren’t working’, but Gaster just keeps staring at him until the words dry upin Papyrus’s mouth and he stumbles to an awkward stop. His hands hurt with how hard he’s twisting them together._

_Once he’s stopped talking, Gaster says, **I could do that, yes.**_

_Startled, Papyrus says, “Oh? Oh! Yes! Good! Thank you!”_

_**Seeing as Sans is earning your keep, you’ll have to find your own food and another place to sleep for a week,** Gaster says. **Somewhere warm would be ideal, given his condition. It would be so easy for his fever to worsen if you don’t take care of him properly. Of course you must have considered that.**_

_Papyrus, who definitely did not consider that, says, “Oh.”_

_**Take him and get out,** Gaster says with an impatient wave. Most of Gaster’s attention has already returned to his computer. **Come back in a week. I may have come up with an alternate medication regimen by then. Or not.**_

_Gaster goes back to ignoring him. Papyrus stands there in the doorway, frozen in place. They don’t have anywhere else to go. Sans has taken care of them both for so long, and now that he needs Papyrus, Papyrus doesn’t know what to do._

_Well. No. He can think of one thing._

_Sans will be upset. But it’s only fair, isn’t it? Papyrus isn’t a babybones anymore. He’s 10, which is old enough now to do fractions and be responsible and carry his own weight, and Sans’s too, if he needs it. He can do this. He can fix things._

_Papyrus swallows and almost manages to sound brave when he says, “I could help you instead. With science things. If you wanted?”_

_Gaster raises his head, meeting Papyrus’s eyes. And then, for the first time since Papyrus met him, he smiles._

The world stutters--

“No,” Papyrus sternly tells the universe, like he’s telling the dog to drop a stolen bone. The front of his shirt is wet and hot and clinging to his ribs. It’s rather a lot of blood. Possibly he should be worried about that. He repeats, louder, “No!”

He can’t remember what he’s refusing. He only knows that it’s important. The most important thing. He has to remember because he would _be_ remembered. He knows that even if he doesn’t know why. If everyone else forgot him, there would still be one person there with their hand outstretched to help him back to his feet, like always.

For some reason, Papyrus thinks of a whoopee cushion. A cheap and battered thing, still faintly stinking of rubber and chemicals, a dusty shade of red not found in nature. It would go off with a highly undignified noise that did not befit any life or death situation, and then...

His brother would laugh.

His brother.

Sans.

Dirty socks and post-it notes, terrible puns, broken fingers, tired laughter, helping with math homework, watching infomercials at 3 AM. The infuriating, beloved mess that is his brother. How on earth could Papyrus ever forget?

So he snatches that memory back and clutches it close to his soul as the world shudders and distorts around him like the waterfalls near Undyne’s house parting around a rock. He can feel the merciless pressure of it, a pain in his head like his skull is being crushed, and it would all stop if he just let Sans go but he doesn’t. He would never. He holds on.

Just when he thinks his skull is going to crack, the pressure eases all at once. He gasps in a breath so deep that his ribs ache, which is silly because, again, he doesn’t technically need to breathe on account of not having a respiratory system, but his body doesn’t seem inclined to listen to reason. It’s also trembling all over in a way that’s incredibly unhelpful and also distracting.

It doesn’t matter. Sans needs him. Gaster must have--

Papyrus stops. Not because the world tries to throw him off its back again like a particularly unruly horse, but because he can remember Gaster’s face. Not an abstract shadow where a memory is supposed to be; he remembers the flat, expressionless mouth that still managed somehow to sneer. The cracks in his skull. The cold white of his eyelights, like the merciless burn of lasers. The slow smile as Papyrus volunteered to be hurt over and over and _over_ again.

Papyrus remembers. 

Not everything. Only two stolen snapshots, wrestled back from the void. But those memories are as clear as what he had for breakfast this morning, a razor-edged clarity that cuts him as they try to make room for themselves in the life he thought he had.

There will be more. Papyrus can feel it, like stagnant, dirty water escaping through a crack in a dam. It’s been under pressure for a long time, and now it’s found a way out. Not quickly, not cleanly. But it can’t be held back anymore.

Sans was afraid that the memories would come crashing in on Papyrus all at once when Gaster came out of the void. He thought Papyrus would be too distracted and upset to fight. Truthfully, Papyrus was a little worried about that too. The person he might’ve been before he lost those memories is a stranger to him. Their greatness is in question.

But he’s remembering things now. He isn’t distracted. He isn’t upset.

He is very, very angry.

Papyrus gets to his feet. The soles of his boots squeak in the blood on the floor. Distantly, he thinks that he should write a nice apology letter to the janitor tomorrow, on account of the mess. For now, he has to get--

His cellphone rings. 

It might have rung before. Papyrus was a little distracted by absolute rage and also the proper etiquette re: a written apology for dripping blood everywhere, because his mind is rarely satisfied only doing one thing at a time no matter how dire the situation.

It’s his ringtone for Red. If anyone would know where Sans is and if he’s all right, it will be Red or Edge.

He picks up the phone.

“Paps?” Papyrus hasn’t heard Red sound this afraid since the first few desperate hours that they realized Edge and Sans were simply gone and may never be coming back. “You okay?”

 _Is_ Papyrus okay? The pain is gone. The blood has mostly stopped leaking out of his skull. He can think clearly. Yes, there’s the small matter of horrific memories of his childhood traumas resurfacing from wherever the void hid them, but even that is a relief, in some strange way.

But more to the point, Papyrus’s okayness doesn’t matter at the moment.

Papyrus says, “I’m fine now. Where is my brother?”

It takes Red a moment to answer. Papyrus’s mind does its very best to think of a thousand horrifying things that could have gone wrong, each worse than the last. Sans can’t be gone again. They just got rid of the last of the casseroles.

Red says, “We got him. He’s in the lab.”

Red might as well have said they threw him in the Core. Dread and fury choke Papyrus for a long few seconds. He thinks of blood pooled on metal tables, the stink of chemicals, two small beds shoved in a corner by themselves. Almost-memories without context. His voice squeaks out a little too high, as if he’s reduced to a child again. “The l--”

No. Edge and Red love Sans as much as Sans loves them, even if none of them use the words. They must’ve brought Sans there for a good reason that is probably related to Papyrus suddenly having his brother’s memory ripped from his skull and then shoved haphazardly back in. It makes sense that they’d have to go back to where all this started. Horrible, unpleasant sense. 

“Fine,” Papyrus says, trying desperately to sound calm. He has to control the anger instead of letting it control him. He doesn’t exactly know how to do that, as he’s never been this angry before, but he’ll try. “Yes. Is he okay?”

“Needs some healing, but between you and the boss, he’ll be all right,” Red says. Papyrus is not reassured. He’s too familiar with what it sounds like when Sans is understating how bad things are. “Where are you?”

“In the school, by my classroom,” Papyrus says. “I--”

Before he can even finish asking for a ride, Red is standing beside him. Immediately, Red sees the blood down the front of Papyrus’s shirt and goes very still, his eyelights piercing and watchful on Papyrus’s face. Papyrus can see him doing mental triage, rearranging crises in a queue from most to least awful.

“Just a smidge of internal bleeding,” Papyrus says. He’s too… everything to try to sound properly comforting, not that he thinks it would help when Red has that particular expression. Instead, he holds out his arm for Red to take. “Take me to my brother, please.”

If his voice breaks a little on the last word, it’s okay. He knows Red will never mention it.

Red seems to come to the decision that this isn’t the worst thing he’s seen tonight, which saves a lot of arguing but is deeply worrying. He grasps Papyrus’s arm with a gentleness that most people wouldn’t believe Red is capable of, including (unfortunately) Red. Then he hesitates.

Impatiently, Papyrus says, “I’m _fine_ , Cherry, let’s--”

“It looks a lot worse than it is,” Red says. His eyes are intent on Papyrus’s, like he’s trying to will Papyrus to believe him. “His HP is stable. Ain’t nothing you guys can’t fix, okay?”

Papyrus wouldn’t think his soul could sink any lower. He was wrong. He swallows and says, quieter, “Okay.”

That’s apparently all Red needed to hear.

Papyrus never remembers being in the void. He really doesn’t like using Sans’s shortcuts, mostly because he doesn’t want to encourage his brother’s laziness but also because he always ends up feeling queasy and scared afterwards for no real reason he can define. Red’s shortcuts aren’t anywhere near as gentle, it turns out. Papyrus spends the first several seconds in the lab trying not to make another mess on the floor. Throwing up rarely improves any situation.

Then the smell of the lab hits him, and he nearly staggers under the weight of the memories trying to crowd into his mind all at once. He remembers that smell, disinfectant and chrome with a lingering tinge of sickness that never quite faded. Only the grip Red has on his arm keeps him from spinning off into the past like an astronaut with their tether cut.

Papyrus shakes the memories off, opens his eyes, and sees Sans lying motionless on the floor.

Oh. That’s why Red tried to warn him. Because if it was as bad as it looked, Sans would be dying. 

( _a room deeper in the lab, a fresh burn on his leg, a seizure. Sans limp and barely breathing, thick black slime running out of his sockets like tears_ ) 

Shaking his head like the memory is a fly he can shoo away, Papyrus goes to Sans. He can’t not; he’s drawn like a magnet by his brother’s marrow glinting wetly in the overhead lights, bright beads of it suspended in the weak magic holding his broken ribs together. He’s barely aware of moving closer. Even less aware of Edge kneeling beside Sans, one hand resting on Sans’s brow, looking guilt-ridden. 

Up close, Sans looks even worse. Red told him Sans’s soul was cracked, back when he explained about all the secrets Sans had been keeping. Sans admitted it himself, if only to say that Edge had it taken care of and not to worry. Papyrus assumed it was one small, tidy little crack, not several of them spiderwebbing across Sans’s poor soul like a windshield someone threw a brick at.

Another memory: Gaster pulling Sans’s shirt up to peer at his soul after the seizure, as if he was looking for something in particular. It had seemed creepily invasive even then, but when Gaster said that all the drugs and tests were meant to help Sans, to help them all, Papyrus actually believed him. More the fool him.

Had _Sans_ ever believed it? Or had he just let Gaster torture him because it was the only way to keep them fed?

Which is worse?

Papyrus draws in a long, slow breath. Releases it. Then he drops to his knees beside his brother, on the side that Edge is not currently occupying. When Papyrus looks at Edge, Edge’s shoulders hunch very subtly as if he’s preparing to get punched in the face, like he thinks Papyrus has any anger left to spare for anyone but Gaster. They will deal with his misplaced guilt complex later. It might involve Papyrus yelling a lot.

For now, Papyrus tugs his gloves off and says, “Tell me what to do.”

They do. It seems Red and Edge have an unfortunate amount of experience piecing each other back together when they’re broken. Red carefully guides Papyrus’s hands, because apparently Sans is leaking black slime out of his sockets again except now Papyrus just can’t see it and it’s also possibly a biohazard, which is inconvenient, while Edge talks him through how to heal shattered ribs and also tells him what happened to Sans while Papyrus was busy bleeding all over a school hallway.

It’s hard, tiring work, but every time Papyrus thinks he’s too exhausted to keep going, another memory hits him and provides a helpful burst of rage-fueled adrenaline. He keeps going until there are bright stars swimming in the corners of his vision, and even then, he tries to push through it until Edge lays a hand on his and quietly tells him it’s enough.

“But--” Papyrus says reflexively.

“I know,” Edge says. “You’re losing the ability to focus your intent. So am I. If we keep going, we could do him more harm than good.”

Papyrus bites back the urge to snap at him that he might think differently if it was _his_ brother unconscious on the floor. Edge doesn’t deserve his anger. If pushing themselves until they blacked out would help Sans at all, he knows Edge wouldn’t hesitate. 

Grudgingly, Papyrus settles back on his heels and takes a look at Sans. He looks… better. Not good, not even mediocre levels of baseline okayness, but better than he did when they started. Much better than if Papyrus had been doing this alone.

“Thank you, Edgy Me,” Papyrus says. “I never knew how to piece broken bones back together! I will carry this horrifying new skill with me always.”

Edge shakes his head. “It’s the least I could do.”

Red has been quiet for a while, which is rarely good when it’s Sans and even worse when it’s Red. Papyrus glances sidelong to check on him and finds him staring at Sans’s ribs, like he’s calculating nerdy things in his head. Or dissociating. One of those things.

“Cherry?” Papyrus asks.

Red sort of grunts an acknowledgement. It’s an excellent imitation of someone who’s paying attention, but Papyrus recognizes what Sans looks like when he’s on autopilot. Meanwhile, Red’s impression of someone who’s not desperately in love with Papyrus’s brother wouldn’t fool anyone but Sans or Red.

“I’ll get him something to eat,” Edge says, sounding tired but not overly concerned that his brother seems to have rebooted in safe mode. He pulls a bottle of water and a handkerchief out of his inventory, wets the cloth, and wipes off the trickle of dried blood beneath his nasal aperture that Papyrus only just now noticed. “That usually helps.”

He holds out the water bottle, which Papyrus takes. To his credit, Edge doesn’t ask if Papyrus needs a handkerchief, because they both know Papyrus is a conscientious adult who carries such things in his inventory instead of wiping his mouth on his sleeve like he was raised by wolves. Unlike certain people he could name.

As Papyrus cleans the blood off his face and spine, Edge studies him with narrowed, thoughtful eyes. For a moment, Papyrus feels like every ugly memory is written on his face. But Sans is unconscious, Red is distracted and Edge isn’t a judge. Edge can’t know.

Except the longer Edge looks at him, the more Papyrus thinks he absolutely _does_ know and is just trying to figure out what to do about it.

“There’s ramen,” Papyrus blurts, internally wincing at the desperate note in his voice. “For Cherry, I mean? Dr. Alphys might’ve left some upstairs. Probably an electric kettle too. Undyne had four of them when they moved in together because Fluffybuns kept giving her backup kettles in case one broke and she had a tea emergency.”

Edge gets that slightly hunted look he always does when Papyrus calls Asgore ‘Fluffybuns’; he looks much the same Sans does when anyone says Gaster’s name, as if the person in question is lurking in a corner just waiting to be called. Then again, considering that Sans got attacked by an invisible void monster in their kitchen, who is Papyrus to accuse anyone of unwarranted paranoia?

Usually Papyrus attempts to explain (again) that this Asgore isn’t their Asgore and would never hurt anyone who wasn’t a human and he hasn’t tried to kill a human child in at least nine months, but this time he only says, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have--”

“It’s fine,” Edge says. “We all have other things on our mind. Do you want anything?”

Papyrus blinks at him. “Edgy Me, are you asking me to go steady? Because I’m flattered but I don’t think a collar would suit me.”

“You’re family,” Edge says. It’s gruff and a little awkward, as he usually is when he’s expressing an emotion other than anger. The corner of his mouth quirks, and he reaches out to gently touch Sans’s ulna. “Besides, I already have my hands full.”

“I imagine you do,” Papyrus says. “Do you want me to go get the ramen? Because--”

“Did you remember him?” Edge asks.

The abruptness of the question reminds Papyrus of a bone snapping. He considers the guilt in Edge’s expression for a long moment, then shows him the bloody handkerchief. “Not right away. Did you?”

“Not until my brother reminded me,” Edge says.

“Well, then,” Papyrus says. “I suppose we both qualify for the ‘remembering things the void forcibly took from us’ trophy. It’s gold-plated and will probably turn your fingers green. I wouldn’t want it on my mantle. Not that we have a mantle. Do you have to have a fireplace to have a mantle? Because Fl-- the king said that it was best if Undyne and I didn’t have easy access to fire.”

“I see what you’re trying to do,” Edge says flatly.

“Do you?” Papyrus asks with a brightness he doesn’t feel. “Good! Then don’t be stupid! It doesn’t suit us.”

Another small, traitorous twitch softens the stern line of Edge’s mouth. Then he glances sidelong at Sans and Red, both of them out of reach at the moment, and he sighs. “You never answered the question about the ramen.”

“I hate ramen, but I appreciate the sentiment, which doesn’t taste like salt and bad decisions,” Papyrus says. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather I--”

“No,” Edge says, and Papyrus can’t tell if that means Edge is sure or that he isn’t. Briefly, Edge pats Papyrus on the shoulder. It continues to be deeply awkward, but also kind of nice. “Stay here. Watch them. When I get back, we can talk, if you want. Or not.”

“Definitely not,” Papyrus says. “Wait, is this the part where I should deny there being something to talk about?”

“I’ll pretend that you tried and save you the time. Just imagine the part where I raise a brow skeptically and don’t believe you,” Edge says dryly. 

Papyrus nods. “Efficient.”

With a grunt of exertion, Edge gets up off the floor and heads for the escalators, taking the steps two at a time. Red briefly takes his eyes off Sans long enough to scan their surroundings and then returns to staring at Sans’s ribs as if he’s willing them to heal faster. Papyrus would offer him a fraternal embrace if he thought it’d be any comfort to Red at all, but he’s fairly sure Red wouldn’t accept. Which is a shame, because Papyrus could really use a hug right about now.

( _snuggling up against his brother under the thin, scratchy blanket on Sans’s bed, staying close so he can be sure his brother hasn’t Fallen in the night_ )

Papyrus shakes his head, trying to help the memory settle into place in his skull so that all its points aren’t jabbing him. It was one thing to know he was no older than Frisk by the time they left the lab. It was another thing to _know_. The bed had seemed so big in that memory, even with two of them sharing it, but by the end he’d barely fit, his feet banging against the rails at the bottom of the bed as he tried to sleep.

Why would anyone do that to children? And if Gaster wanted to run these experiments, why only ever the two of them? Why didn’t he replace them when they finally left the lab? Why did he choose them out of all of the orphans in the underground? Because they were skeletons, or because they were convenient?

Why does he want Sans so badly now?

If they leave the doctor alive, will he ever stop? Or do they have to...

Belatedly, Papyrus realizes that he’s twisting the handkerchief he forgot he was holding. Water spreads across the tiles, tinted pink with blood. He hastily wipes it up before it can touch Sans.

Red and Edge seem to think that the shields on the lab are keeping Gaster from entering and that he can’t see or hear them. Papyrus can’t call his name and ask him why. Even knowing he wouldn’t get an answer, at least he could ask. At least he could try. All he has instead is memories and silence and this _anger_ , still seething inside him.

And the only answers he’ll get are the ones that he makes for himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: mention of non-con soul touching; unreality; panic attack; Sans is briefly erased from Papyrus's memory; blood; aftermath of Papyrus breaking Sans's finger; verbal and medical abuse; Gaster manipulating Papyrus into volunteering for experiments; mention of vomiting; body horror; aftermath of Sans seizing and getting his ribs broken; Red dissociating; Papyrus starts to question his pacifism
> 
> This chapter is set somewhat concurrently to the first chapter and to [this sidestory](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15227427/chapters/53750911) of Red's POV. I've shifted to Gaster's dialogue being in bold in flashbacks because I kept fucking up the coding otherwise. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> detailed content warnings in the endnotes

Unconsciousness comes black and clinging, but Sans doesn’t rest. There’s the nagging feeling that he has to do something, an urgency hooked in his soul like a fishhook. Every time he starts to sink deep enough to actually get some peace, he remembers _I have to find Red_ , and the thought jerks him back to an anxious, half-conscious place where he can hear voices but can’t understand words. 

There’s a bright pain in his ribs like a wound being cauterized. He doesn’t whimper. The doctor will be angry if he’s not quiet, and Sans isn’t sure if he could squeak out a noise if he tried anyway. He can’t do anything but try to swim towards the surface, his limbs heavy and cold. He can’t wake up. This sticky darkness will fill up all the empty places in him until he might not even care when he drowns.

And then he feels Red touch the collar. He’s not sure how he knows it’s Red, other than the fact that Red can’t keep his grabby hands off the collar to save his life, but he knows deep in his bones that it couldn’t be anyone else. And where Red is, there’s Edge. He found them. They won’t let him drown.

 _Mine,_ Sans thinks.

He sleeps.

***

A few epochs pass before sleep finally spits Sans back out onto consciousness’s unwelcoming shores. He lays there with his eyes closed, musing on whether he’s got the flu or whether he just got his ass kicked last night. It takes a while to remember that it’s totally that second thing.

Oh fuck.

In the movie adaptation of Sans’s life where he’s played by some kind of tough guy, maybe Bruce Willis, he’d launch himself out of bed and be ready to fight. In reality, he tries to sit up too fast and pain detonates in his skull and his side. He drops back to the bed and groans, “Okay, that was a bad idea.”

“No shit,” Red says. The sound of his voice makes Sans’s soul do a funny twist in his chest that’s almost as painful as his ribs. Red presses Sans’s shoulder flat to the mattress like Sans is stupid enough to try to do that twice. “Take it slow, jackass. Your bro and the boss put a lot of work into putting you back together.”

Sans blinks his eyes open, wincing a little against the bright overhead lights, and takes in his surroundings. He’s in the public part of the lab, on Alphys’s foldout bed. Red is staring him down with something that looks more complicated than simple anger. Over Red’s shoulder, he sees Edge watching him with an intensity that says he thinks Sans might disappear if he blinks. 

And then he sees his brother. He sees Papyrus back in the fucking lab, peering at him with eyes that have seen way too much. There’s a few lingering traces of blood caught in the notches of Papyrus’s spine. Papyrus looks older and so much angrier than he did the last time Sans saw him, in the school parking lot before the trip.

But that doesn’t stop Papyrus from dropping the knitting needles incongruously clutched in his hands (along with the world’s longest and ugliest scarf) and reaching for Sans like he means to drag him into a hug, only to remember at the last moment. He just sits there with his hands hovering a couple inches away from Sans before hesitantly coming to rest on Sans’s humerus. Papyrus pats him like he’s the dog, tears welling up in his eyes, and says, “The pizza coupon was expired.”

“Oh,” Sans says. He’s not sure what else to say.

“I hadn’t thrown it away yet,” Papyrus says. “I was going to text you, but you were already gone, and--”

Papyrus’s voice breaks, and the tears spill over. Sans looks down at his hands and finds them clean of black goop, so he’s allowed to put his hand over Papyrus’s. It’s the closest thing to a hug that they can do right now, what with Sans’s busted-up ribs. Voice rough, which he’s definitely going to blame on his parched throat, Sans says, “Hey, it’s okay. I came back.”

“Well, I should hope so!” Papyrus snaps. “I hereby forbid any more getting erased from existence, brother! It’s very hard on my wardrobe!”

Sans takes a second look at Papyrus and recognizes the shirt he’s wearing as one of Edge’s. Good thing Edge didn’t have a chance to drop off his suitcase last night or they’d have a fashion emergency on their hands. Red accepted immediately that Papyrus was off-limits as far as sex goes, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t ogle a little if Papyrus was sitting around with no shirt on, his ribs and spine on display.

Y’know, like Sans just realized his own on display are right now. Not that there’s much to look at, seeing as Sans doubts even Red could kink out on broken ribs. Still, he instinctively covers his naked soul with his hand, hiding it from his brother. Too late. There’s no way Papyrus didn’t see the cracks while Sans was blacked out.

Papyrus raises one sardonic brow, looking eerily like Edge. Sans offers him a weak grin. “C’n I have something to clutch to my bosom like I’m a scandalized maiden?”

His brother doesn’t have a chance to answer before Red scoffs and pulls a wrinkled shirt out of his inventory. Red drapes it over Sans’s chest carefully, as if the slight weight of the fabric might hurt Sans somehow. He looks kinda pissed off about it, like his hands are acting without permission. As soon as it’s done, he looks away and mutters, “Heaven fucking forbid we don’t protect your modesty.”

It occurs to Sans belatedly that like Papyrus, Red also isn’t in the shirt he was wearing last night. Like he got something on it. Sans peers at Red’s hands but can’t see any traces of the black goop. If Red _did_ get contaminated, he scrubbed off all the evidence.

There’s a lot of questions Sans needs to ask. A lot he needs to answer, too. He only just woke up, but he’s already exhausted again. The first day or so after a seizure, he was usually headachy, sore and generally out of it. Seems like this is no exception. Figures. Just when he needs to be sharp...

“Do you want anything else?” Edge asks. It’s the first time that he’s spoken. He looks guilty and worried sick. Sans offers his free hand, palm up, and Edge takes it like an unexpected gift. The tenderness in his touch makes Sans’s throat feel a little tight. “Some water? A painkiller? You should probably wait a few more minutes before you eat, I’m afraid.”

“Water would be great,” Sans says. “No painkiller. I need to think straight.”

“Ah yes,” Papyrus says dryly. “Whenever I need to think important thinky thoughts, I always wish I had several broken ribs and a postictal migraine. Just the other day, I was doing a crossword puzzle and thought, oh, if only I could be distracted by completely unnecessary agony!”

Red snickers. Helpful as ever. Meanwhile Sans accepts the water bottle from Edge and tries to figure out how to wash the lingering goop out of the inside of his mouth without having to sit up or roll over.

“So how much do you remember?” Sans asks his brother.

It catches Papyrus off guard. If Sans didn’t already know Papyrus’s memories were coming back, the slightly wide-eyed look Papyrus gives him would be proof enough. Papyrus says, “Um.”

Red turns to stare hard at Papyrus. Then he gripes to the ceiling, “I’m losing my touch.”

“You were slightly preoccupied,” Edge says. Red gives him a look that would draw blood if Edge wasn’t so intimately acquainted with Red’s crap. As it is, Edge doesn’t even blink.

“I don’t remember everything yet. Enough to get a general idea,” Papyrus says. A pause. “He isn’t a good person.”

Red snorts. It probably sounds like a massive understatement to someone who doesn’t know that’s the most damning thing Papyrus could possibly say about anyone.

“No, he’s not,” Sans agrees. He studies his brother, the weariness in his eyes, and goes ahead and asks the stupid question. “You okay?”

Papyrus gives him a look that somehow manages to be fond and withering all at once. “Honestly, Sans! Only you could lay there with three broken ribs after leaking goop out of several places and ask if _I’m_ okay!”

“Not an answer, buddy,” Sans says.

“Oh yes, I cannot imagine where I could have possibly learned to be evasive about my emotions,” Papyrus says sourly. He throws his hands up. “I’m fine! The void tried to take you, I got a teeny-tiny little nosebleed from all the remembering, and our childhood was incredibly awful in a number of unexpected ways, but everything is going to be okay now!”

Papyrus sounds less like he’s trying to be reassuring and more like he’s warning the universe to get its shit together because everything damned well will be okay if Papyrus has to fistfight universal causality itself. So basically, yeah, Papyrus will be fine.

“Okay,” Sans says. He gives Papyrus’s hand a final squeeze and resigns himself to the fact that he has to try to sit up sometime. Red’s the one least likely to stop and fuss every time Sans winces, so Sans turns to him. “C’n you give me a hand up? I figured some stuff out last night I gotta explain and I don’t wanna do it while I’m flat on my back.”

“Oh, you mean you did some deep thinking while you were getting the shit kicked out of you by Gaster?” Red asks. His tone is almost pleasant, but there’s nothing friendly in the set of his grin. “Fuck knows that always clears my head. Didja think about how we shoulda killed him before he could drag you out of the goddamn _timeline_?!”

The volume and harshness of Red’s voice ramps up over the course of the last sentence until he’s pretty much snarling. He’s holding onto control, barely, but he looks like he really, really wants to bounce Sans off a wall right now. Belatedly, Sans realizes Red’s scared shitless.

“Oh dear,” Papyrus murmurs. “Cherry, I really don’t think that’s--”

“Brother,” Edge says, a sharp jerk on the leash. “Enough.”

“It’s fine,” Sans tells them, holding Red’s eyes. He’s not afraid of Red’s (justified) anger, even though it’s burning so hot he can nearly feel it on his bones like a sunburn. If he flinches now, Red will never forget it. “You earned an ‘I told you so’ or two.”

“Well, yes, obviously,” Papyrus says. “But--”

“That’s so _generous_ of you, Sansy,” Red says. He leans a little closer and says like he’s tasting every cold, furious word: “I fucking told you so.”

“I know,” Sans says. “I’m sorry.”

After a long moment of staring each other down, Red huffs out a noise that’s too angry to be a laugh and relaxes a little. But he’s apparently not willing to let it go just yet, not before he adds for good measure, “You’re lucky he didn’t kill you.”

Like a flashbulb going off in his skull, Sans remembers the ruined soul in Gaster’s hand, beating in time with his own. Time hasn’t dulled the edge of his horror. It probably never will. Just one more bad memory to carry around.

Red’s got it backwards. If Gaster killed him, Sans would have been lucky. By the time that black fluid started worming its way into his soul, Sans thinks he would have begged for something as kind as death.

Maybe Red feels Sans’s involuntary shudder, or maybe he just sees the change in Sans’s expression. His eyes narrow, the lights in them sharpening to killing points. Funny how fast Red’s anger can shift directions, how easily he shifts from looming over Sans to standing between him and the world with just a subtle change in expression. The last time Red looked at him like that, Unundyne’s fingerprints were still branded on Sans’s throat. It hasn’t gotten more comfortable since then. 

Not comfortable, no, but _comforting_.

(Also unfortunately hot. If Sans wasn’t beaten to hell, wracked with a fuckton of body horror, and sitting on a bed with his brother, it might actually go somewhere. As it is, it’s mostly an intellectual observation at best. Jot that down in his research notes for later. If there is a later.)

“So are you gonna help me up or should I ask somebody else?” Sans says, like there wasn’t just an awkwardly long silence.

“Let me,” Edge says. He’s still holding Sans’s hand.

Gruffly, Red says, “I got it. This is a one person job. He’s pretty short.”

“Fuck you, Napolean,” Sans says. 

One corner of Red’s grin ticks up. “Not right now, baby. I’ve got a headache.”

“I will never understand your relationship,” Papyrus sighs.

Despite that minor dust-up (which could’ve gotten real literal, considering Red), Red and Sans lock eyes and have a moment of perfect simpatico that it’s better to pretend Papyrus didn’t just invoke the r-word.

With surprising gentleness, Red helps him sit up and brace his back against the headboard. There’s a lot of cursing involved on both their parts and a constant stream of worried suggestions from Papyrus, but they eventually get there. As Sans tries to catch his breath, Edge quietly reclaims the hand he was holding.

“Reconsidering painkillers yet?” Red asks.

“Nope,” Sans lies. He leans his head back against the headboard. He can feel sweat running down his brow. The acrid taste in his mouth has only gotten worse. “C’n I have a bucket?”

With the promptness of somebody who thinks Sans is about to hurl, Edge shoves a bucket into Sans’s lap. It’s a candy bucket Papyrus bought from a Halloween display because he likes things with skulls on them. It represents their heritage or something. Which is an unfortunate metaphor, considering what Sans intends to use it for.

“You mind if I rinse my mouth out first?” Sans asks Edge and Papyrus. He doubts that Red minds a few bodily fluids. “It’s gross, but--”

Immediately Edge has a travel bottle of mouthwash in his outstretched hand. So does Papyrus. Same brands, even. They eye each other, then exchange approving nods. Red snorts. “Nice to know some Boy Scout bullshit is universal.”

“First impressions are important, Cherry,” Papyrus says. “Halitosis is no skeleton’s friend.”

“Nerd,” Red says with a fondness he would probably deny to his grave.

After Sans has dealt with the clinging film of goop in his mouth and Red sets the bucket aside, he feels almost normal. Aside from his ribs, and the pounding headache, and the lingering sense of violation, and Gaster lurking outside, and the fact that he can’t leave this hellhole lab unless he wants to get turned into a battery. Y’know. _Normal_.

He hands the bottle back to Edge and gives him a weak grin. “Romance, huh? First date, dinner and a movie. Second date, watching me spit into a bucket.”

“Technically, the second date was a museum,” Edge says. “Perfectly traditional. The third date was dinner and movies in our hotel room. The fourth date was putting your ribs back together. You saved spitting into a bucket until at least the fifth date, as is traditional.”

“Ha,” Sans says, because the pain of actually laughing right now might kill him. “Well, at least I showed you a good time before we got to the part with the body fluids.” One corner of Edge’s mouth twitches, and Sans’s brain catches up with what he just said. He winces. “Uh. Heh. I mean--”

“The manual says usually happens on the third date,” Papyrus says, his expression perfectly innocent aside from the slightly malicious look in his eyes. Red snickers like the asshole that he is.

There’s a human saying about whistling past graveyards. Or maybe it was humming? Kazoos? Whatever, some kind of musical bullshit to distract themselves from the dead people buried like weird seeds beneath stone markers. Sans never understood it until now, when he’s genuinely considering letting Papyrus tease him about his sex life just so he doesn’t have to talk about Gaster.

Unfortunately, avoidance got him in this fucking situation, and it’s not just his soul on the line.

“Yeah, so how about that subject change, huh?” Sans asks. His grin feels brittle. “I should tell you what happened.”

That immediately seems to suck all the air out of the room, and tension rushes in to fill the void. Sans hasn’t killed a buzz like that since his last comedy show. The look his brother is giving him makes him avert his eyes, staring down at his hand clasped so gently in Edge’s.

“Go on,” Edge murmurs.

“Okay,” Sans says. The silence bears down on them for another long few seconds before he sighs and repeats, “Okay. So Red was right that the doctor was trying to break my soul, with the meds and the tests and the…”

When he trails off, Papyrus helpfully supplies, “Torture?”

Sans winces. Despite everything, his first instinct is still to say it wasn’t that bad. Considering that the tyrant ordered Edge to break Red’s ribs more than once, does Sans really get to call some painful medical exams torture? But, well, the whole thing where Gaster has been feeding off Sans’s soul is probably kind of a dick move no matter where you come from.

“Uh, yeah,” Sans says. “Anyway, Red thought the point of all that was trying to figure out a prototype so we could use it on humans if we ever got into another war, but I saw Gaster’s soul last night and--”

In the periphery of his vision, he sees both Edge and Red go tense and still, although Edge’s grip on his hand stays painfully gentle. Red demands, his voice dangerously flat, “He brought his fucking soul out?”

“It was cracked,” Sans says, gracelessly avoiding the question. Some stupid little part of him had been hoping he was wrong about Gaster wanting to press their souls together, but judging from Red and Edge’s reaction, it would’ve been something at least that bad if not worse in ways he thankfully doesn’t have the imagination to conjure up. “More than mine or even Red’s. Looked like a goddamn jigsaw puzzle. He should be dust by now, but that black void goop was holding it together.”

“The same stuff that was coming out of your eyesockets?” Papyrus asks.

“Yeah.” The reminder makes Sans’s eyes itch, like the dried up remains are still clinging to the rims of his sockets. Psychosomatic, probably. His free hand fidgets with the sheets. “By the by, Red, you haven’t noticed my soul leaking black fluid from the cracks, have you?”

The last sentence sounds brittle, like his voice is threatening to break even as he’s grinning. Sans clears his throat. He’s okay right now. Red and Edge saved him. He’s fine. He’s holding it together. 

“I woulda mentioned that by now, sweetheart,” Red says. It’s almost gentle by Red’s standards, the pet name riding the thin border between irony and sincerity. “It’d be kinda hard to miss.”

“Do you think that’s why he survived falling into the Core?” Edge asks. “Because the black fluid held him together?”

“... Heh.” Sans’s chuckle is a little too sharp. He averts his eyes and stares at the wall. “Sort of. See, it turns out there’s kinda been a, uh, complication. He bound our souls together. _I’m_ what’s keeping him alive.” 

The silence that follows is charged with violent potential, like barometric pressure dropping before a storm. Maybe he should look up to read their expressions because apparently Papyrus is getting in on those silent conversations Edge and Red have, but nope, he just stares at the patterns of chipped paint where Alphys’s anime posters used to hang. Maybe Mew Mew Kissy Cutie is trying to communicate through some kind of code. Maybe she knows what the fuck to do about Gaster, because Sans sure doesn’t.

Finally, Red says, “Well, fuck.”

The water bottle bumps against Sans’s knee, making him flinch and meet Edge’s eyes. Edge’s voice stays quiet and steady as he tells Sans, “Take a drink, and then tell me what happened last night. Start from the beginning.”

There’s no question that it’s an order, no matter how gently it’s given. If it was Red, Sans would feel obligated to tell him to fuck off even if he’s humiliatingly grateful at the moment not to have to think about at least this one thing, only do it. Good thing it’s Edge, and so Sans can let it slide just this once.

After finishing off half the bottle of water, Sans says, “Welp, first I went in the kitchen for some coupons. Got a headache. Started bleeding goop out of my faceholes. Had a seizure. Blacked out.”

“Oh yeah, thanks for the heads up about the seizures, by the way,” Red says, because apparently this is the kind of lecture where the audience gets to heckle. “It’s not like you having one out of the blue would freak the boss out or anything.”

“Freak _me_ out?” Edge says, one brow arched.

“Gimme a break, dude, I haven’t had one for like a decade,” Sans sighs. “Paps’ll vouch for me.”

“In this one specific instance, I have to agree with him,” Papyrus says. “They got better once we weren’t living with the doctor, for obvious reasons.”

“Did they usually involve that black fluid coming out of you?” Edge asks.

“Nope,” Sans says, at the same time Papyrus is saying, “Yes!”

When Sans turns to stare at him, Papyrus’s mouth turns down at the corners, and his hands twist fretfully together on his lap. He continues, quieter than Sans has ever heard him, “After your first seizure. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I thought the doctor would say something if it was important, which in retrospective was a rather stupid assumption to make--”

“S’okay, dude,” Sans says, cutting off an incoming guilt spiral before it can really get going. “It’s not your fault he’s an asshole.”

Papyrus’s expression darkens. It’s unsettling to see that kind of anger on his brother’s face, but fuck, it’s not like Papyrus doesn’t deserve to be furious. “I agree, brother. It’s not anyone’s fault but his.”

Sans pretends he doesn’t see the pointed look Papyrus gives all three of them at the end of his sentence and asks, “How long were you guys looking for me, anyway?”

“Maybe twenty minutes total from the time I went to check the kitchen to when I dragged us to the lab,” Red says. Judging from the tension around his eyes, it was a pretty awful twenty minutes.

“Huh. Guess I wasn’t out cold for long, then. So I woke up. The doc kicked me in the ribs a couple times.” Sans takes another swig of lukewarm water, mostly so he can keep the recap as calm and barebones (ha) as possible. He doesn’t need to mention that for a minute there, he thought he was dying. When he speaks again, his voice is downright clinical. “It didn’t ding my HP. Maybe because our souls are hooked up. Maybe because I technically wasn’t in the timeline. I dunno.”

“Maybe he’s learned to control his intent?” Papyrus asks. 

“He never could before, and it’s not like he’d have anyone to practice on in the void,” Sans says. “And it seemed like he wasn’t able to actually touch me for long, just a few seconds. One hit would have been enough to make his point. He could’ve left enough gas in the tank that he could stop me if I tried to make a break for it or fight back. But he didn’t. I think the second kick in the ribs was just because he was pissed off. I have that effect on people.”

Quietly, Edge asks, “Is that when he brought out his soul?”

Sans thinks he keeps his expression blank, but Edge pets his knuckles like he thinks Sans needs soothing, and Papyrus makes a wordless, upset noise. Clearing his throat, like anybody believes that’s why he hesitated, Sans says, “Yeah. It was pretty messed up.”

He leaves it at that. Let them think he only means that it was damaged. He knows he can’t do justice to the sheer wrongness of it. Honestly, he’s a little glad. He doesn’t want them to know what it was like to see it in Gaster’s hand and realize that the magic it’s swollen and pulsing with is _his_. He never wants them to have to understand that.

“He tried to take out my soul,” Sans says. His voice is even. Steady. He’s fine now. He just can’t look at them while he’s talking about this. They’re upset. “I dunno what he was gonna do with it, but. Yeah.”

“Oh,” Papyrus says quietly, like this is breaking his heart. He puts a comforting hand on Sans’s ankle. “I’m sorry, brother.”

In Sans’s culture, what Gaster did would be considered pretty damned inappropriate. Papyrus is clearly bothered by it. But Sans can hear Red’s bristling rage in his silence, he can feel the tension in Edge’s grip, and he knows it’s something worse for them. There’s a reason he never mentioned what those nightmares were about.

Honestly, after letting Edge push magic into him until he’s dizzy and vulnerable, after watching Red stroke his own soul as it dripped hot silver slick all over both of them, Sans sees where they’re coming from. His soul only meant pain before them, just an inconvenient body part that kept trying to kill him. It hurts him more than it should, for reasons that are now blindingly fucking obvious, but without it, he wouldn’t have had those weird, tender nights where he sits on Red’s lap and lets Edge heal him.

And Gaster tainted that. Made it something painful and sick. He tried to force himself into Sans’s head while Sans begged him to stop, but Gaster _wouldn’t_ , he just kept--

Apparently all that effort Sans put into reminding himself he’s totally fucking fine now was a waste because he shudders, a purely involuntary reaction. Silently, Red shifts closer and slides a possessive arm around his waist, careful not to jostle his ribs. The warmth he radiates is comforting even though Sans is pretty sure Red’s pissed enough to dismember someone and play Jenga with the limbs.

Sans clears his throat and says with the closest thing he can manage to cheer, “So that’s when the collar zapped him in the face.”

It wasn’t exactly the face that Gaster got zapped in, but hey, it works to derail the conversation; Red snerks, some of that murderous tension easing, and even Edge looks viciously pleased. Red says, “Can’t tell you how many times some dumb fucker tried to grab me by the collar and ended up losing the use of their hand.”

“Usually because you cut it off while they’re distracted by the pain,” Edge says.

“Oh, usually,” Red agrees. “But fingers don’t work so good after a third degree burn even when I _don’t_ give ‘em a free amputation.”

“Very few things work good after a third degree burn!” Papyrus says. “Aside from a renewed sense of self-preservation and regret! Definitely not fingers, though.”

“Okay, I can see now why you told me not to fuck with the buckle,” Sans tells Edge.

Red scoffs. “Yeah, right. He adjusted it to recognize you like a month after we first got here. You could fondle the damn thing all day long and all you’d have to worry about is a static shock. He was worried about _me_ biting you.”

Automatically, heedless of the fucked up situation they’re in and his brother sitting right next to him, Sans’s stupid mouth says, “Since when do you need a reason to bite me?”

Red gives him an intense once-over and then grins, slow and sharp. “Don’t usually hear you complaining, babe.”

“Oh, to have never learned language so I didn’t have to understand those words you just said,” Papyrus sighs. “Is this how you feel about the leather pants?”

“Pretty much,” Sans says. “Does that mean you’ll stop wearing them?”

Papyrus stares at him. “Good heavens, no! Depriving my adoring public of the sexy pants would be a crime against fashion!”

“Sure would,” Red agrees, his grin calculated for maximum aggravation. 

Before Sans can tell him to shut the fuck up, Edge smacks Red upside the back of the head. Red growls at him, but it seems half-hearted, and Edge ignores it. “Focus. What happened then, Sans?”

Sans rubs at his sockets with his free hand and tries to remember, although between the adrenaline and the post-seizure fatigue, the night runs together like melting wax until it’s just a messy smear of panic. He’s not gonna mention the bit where Red left the kitchen as Sans tried to reach out to him. It’d sound like an accusation, and he knows goddamn well that Red wouldn’t have left him there if he’d seen him. “The doc tried to get me to give him my soul. Said that if I didn’t play along, he’d use Red as a battery instead.”

Red grins like Sans knew he would, the lights in his eyes burning like the highbeams of an oncoming truck. “He can try.”

“You’re not bulletproof,” Edge says. A few months ago, Sans wouldn’t have recognized that it was concern making Edge sound harsh. “If he tries to come for you--”

“Why _would_ he come for Cherry?” Papyrus says suddenly. His expression is thoughtful. “Why not Edgy Me or, well, regular me? Both of us have plenty of magic to spare, which is housed safely in a slightly less squishy and fragile exterior. But he only seems interested in you two.”

“Good point, bro.” Sans shrugs. “I dunno. Maybe the only reason he can leech off my soul is because my HP is lousy. I can’t fight off a fucking cold, let alone him.”

“Or maybe it’s that you and me already got a goddamn parasite on our souls,” Red says. His tone is deceptively easy, but his fingertips scrape against Sans’s iliac crest like he’s agitated. “What’s one more?”

Sans turns to look at him. “You mean the judge?”

“What else d’you wanna call it?” Red asks. “Neither of us asked for it. It rides shotgun in our head, and it’ll fuck off to the next poor bastard when it’s used us up. Sounds like a parasite to me.”

The words are so steeped in years of bitterness that Sans can almost taste it. Then again, if Sans spent years being forced to execute people he knew were mostly innocent while Asgore called him _my judge_ like he was a stupid but beloved dog, then he’d be pretty fucking bitter too.

“Perhaps the judge’s presence left a door open for the doctor to exploit,” Edge says. “Or your role as the judge told him that your soul would support another consciousness, which would be an uncertain prospect for anyone else he chose to experiment on.”

“Interesting idea, but the doc didn’t find out I was the judge until I’d already been in the lab a couple years,” Sans says.

“You sure about that?” Red asks. “He was good pals with the king since before the war. Mine was, anyway. Must’ve seen a lot of judges come and go over the years. Maybe he just knew one when he saw one, even if you were in stripes.”

“Why, because I seemed like a particularly judgy twelve year old?” Sans asks. “It’s not like I have a sign over my head.” 

Papyrus and Edge exchange a sidelong look. Papyrus says in the way that means he’s making a rare attempt at tact, “Well, you do get a certain look when the judge is telling you things.”

“It’s hard to miss if you know what to look for,” Edge says.

“Because you can see right through everyone and stare at their very soul,” Papyrus says. “Which doesn’t bother me because if I take my shirt off, you can do that anyway, but other people might find it a smidge unnerving!”

“Or maybe he only wanted a handy guinea pig to test his meds on and he was lucky enough to accidentally pick the judge,” Red says. “Doesn’t really matter. Either way, he figured out how to use it to fuck you over.”

For a moment, Sans has the stupidest fucking urge to just throw open the door to the lab and ask. Gaster’s probably still waiting out there, and he always loved to talk about his own brilliance. If Sans made sure to stay inside the lab, they could get some easy answers instead of playing this bullshit guessing game. Might be worth suggesting it just so he can see Red’s expression before he gets tackled and handcuffed to the headboard.

Sans rubs at his socket, absently scratching at some dried-up goop. He’s getting punchy, all this talking is making his ribs ache, and he’d kill for a shower and something to eat. In the hopes of getting this over with quicker, he says, “Anyway, that’s about it for the interesting stuff. I realized all he could do is talk at me and wait for his new grabby-hands powers to recharge, so I went upstairs to find you guys. Then Red brought us to the lab, and badabing, badaboom, we’re at the end of the exciting story. Can I have a sandwich or something? I’m pretty sure I’m not gonna throw up any more void goop.”

Of course Edge produces a sandwich from his inventory. It still has the sticker from the Natural History Museum cafeteria on it. Sans doesn’t even check the contents, just rips the plastic wrap off and wolfs it down with an intensity that makes Papyrus look a little alarmed and/or nauseated. Red seems impressed.

Idly petting the top of Sans’s iliac crest, soothing the scrapes his fingertips left behind, Red says, “So you got nothing to say about the part where you shrugged off three broken ribs, a seizure, and the fucking boogeyman so you could drag yourself upstairs?”

Mouth half-full of peanut butter sandwich, Sans says, “Not really relevant.”

Red snorts. “Figures.”

“For heaven’s sake, don’t talk with your mouth full, Sans,” Papyrus says with affectionate disgust.

Edge scoffs. “If you can get him to actually listen to you, you’re better at brother management than I am.”

“You’re an excellent brother, Edgy Me, don’t talk nonsense,” Papyrus says, wielding sincerity like a surprise blackjack to the back of the skull. “Don’t you think so, Cherry?”

Anybody else would get stabbed for that, but Red just gives Papyrus a narrow-eyed warning look and then ignores him in favor of asking Sans in a casual tone that fools exactly nobody, “So is this the part where you try to say we still shouldn’t fight him? ‘Cause if so--”

“Fuck that,” Sans says. “I don’t like it, but we gotta deal with him somehow.”

“That’s surprisingly proactive of you, brother!” Papyrus says with approval.

Apparently Red agrees, because his brows flirt with the hairline he doesn’t have. He stares at Sans hard, like he’s trying to peer into Sans’s skull to see the thoughts rattling around in there. “Huh.”

“What?” Sans asks. “You’re gonna get on my jock when I say I don’t wanna fight him and then look at me like I’m crazy when I do?”

“I ain’t complaining, but that’s a helluva plot twist, Sansy,” Red says. “Figured I’d hafta yell about it some more.”

“Sorry to disappoint you.” Sans takes a moment to finish off his sandwich, which is a convenient enough reason to give himself time to think. There’s an easy answer to the question Red isn’t asking: why now? Because Gaster dragged Sans out of reality and beat the shit out of him, that’s why. Sans narrowly dodged a fate worse than death, which would be enough to spook anybody into action. Normally Sans loves an easy answer. He doesn’t know why he says, “I’m not gonna let him do this to anybody else.”

It’s dangerously close to the real answer: _I’m not gonna let him do this to you_.

Too close, it turns out. Red studies him, the expression on his face too unfamiliar to read. Sans looks away, focusing his attention on balling up the shreds of plastic wrap without losing any crumbs. Wouldn’t want to be messy, after all. It’s not like there’s smears of marrow and goop all over these poor, doomed sheets already.

“Agreed,” Edge says, mercifully breaking the silence. “Thankfully, the shielding on the lab has bought us time to figure out how to manage that.” 

“Well, we’re not killing him,” Red says. 

Sans nearly dislocates something, his head whips around so fast to stare at Red. His body shrills out a complaint at the careless movement, but he ignores it in favor of putting a hand on Red’s brow to check for a fever and/or head injury and/or possession. “The fuck, dude? Are you broken or something?”

Normally Red would smack his hand away for that, probably, but apparently he’s feeling nice; he wraps his hand around Sans’s arm and holds on instead. “Don’t get me wrong. I wanna tear him to dusty pieces, but it’d probably kill you too and I just got you broken in how I like you.”

Sans really shouldn’t be flattered by that, seeing as it makes him sound like he’s a couch Red dragged out of the dump, but he’s a little flattered anyway. He tugs gently out of Red’s grip. “We don’t know that it’ll kill me. He’s been in the void six years without food or water after a refreshing dip in fucking magma. Either he can’t die at all or he died and came back a few dozen times like it didn’t matter. Either way, I’m not dead yet.”

“Not for lack of trying!” Papyrus says brightly.

“You wanna risk it, dumbass?” Red demands. Then he snorts. “Wait, who the fuck am I asking? Of course you wanna risk it, but we ain’t gonna, so shut up.”

“Y’know, I’m not _trying_ to die,” Sans says. “It’s just been a really lousy couple months.”

“No, I understand completely, brother,” Papyrus says, patting Sans’s knee. “You just have terrible luck, cripplingly low self-worth, and no common sense whatsoever.”

“And a tendency to try to jump on every grenade that rolls by,” Edge says. “Including the ones that haven’t had their pins pulled yet.”

Despite everything, Sans laughs, and the relief of knowing that he still can genuinely laugh even with all this bullshit going on is worth the blinding spike of pain in his ribs that makes him have to bite back a groan. “Wow. Is this what happens when the two of you hang out? You just mercilessly roast me?”

“Well, no one else understands what it’s like to deal with a Sans all the time,” Papyrus says. “To be fair, we also mercilessly roast Cherry and talk about shibari techniques? Does that help?”

“Not really, no.” Sans leans his head against the headboard, squinting against the maddening itch of his socket. It’s such a small thing compared to the busted ribs, but there’s definitely some goop crusted on the rim and it’s just one more goddamn irritant making it hard to concentrate. He probably looks like he’s wearing eyeliner, like Red’s edgy bullshit is rubbing off on him. Good thing for his reputation that only Red can see it. “So if murder’s out, anybody got any ideas what the hell we _are_ gonna do?”

“You’re gonna take a fucking shower. You smell funny,” Red says. Trust him to notice Sans’s discomfort and latch onto it like a barracuda. When Sans opens his mouth to argue, Red cuts him off. “The soul thing is a helluva curveball. Everybody needs a couple minutes to rethink their strategies.”

“We might not have a couple minutes,” Sans says.

“Then we’re gonna hafta improv a plan anyway,” Red says with the brutal practicality of someone who grew up in hell. For Edge and Red, they lived like this all the time, always waiting for someone to crash in and try to kill them. The dishes still had to be done, and you still had to shower and sleep at some point or other. “You feel another seizure coming on?”

Sans takes stock. Yeah, he’s got the headache from hell, but that usually happened after a seizure. It feels subtly different than the one he had right before he started seeing Gaster, less prickly and sharp, more like someone steadily digging their knuckles into the back of his sockets. “Nah. I think the shield’s doing its job so far.”

“And your soul?” Edge asks.

 _Well, edgelord, it turns out it’s not exactly my soul, more of a roommate situation that’s getting pretty fucking crowded, so not great._ Sans bites that back and just shrugs. “Feels the same it usually does.”

“Okay,” Red says. “So you might as well hose off and let ‘em take another shot at those ribs. The shields held this long.”

“He has a point, brother,” Papyrus says. Something seems to occur to him, and he adds quickly in what’s probably meant to be a reassuring tone, “Although I don’t think you smell any worse than normal!”

“Thanks, Paps,” Sans says. He scrubs a hand over his face, grimacing at the stickiness of dried goop and sweat. “Yeah, okay. Guess if he comes bursting in like the Kool-Aid Man, we can always just _yes, and_ him to death.” 

Edge turns Sans’s hand over and lifts it to his mouth, pressing a quick kiss to the inside of his wrist that makes Sans’s whole body go hot and then shivery in the span of a second. Apparently his libido is making a valiant last-ditch effort after all. Then it gutters out, leaving him just tired. Edge lets him go. Glancing at Red, Edge says, “Keep an eye on him.”

It’s not meant to be a criticism because that’s not how Edge operates, at least not anymore, but Sans sees Red almost flinch beneath his default grin. “Sure, boss. Whatever you say.”

Edge’s expression softens. “I’m not--”

“It’s fine,” Red says, as clear a warning for Edge to drop the subject as Edge is gonna get before Red gets mean. Meaner, anyway. “C’mon, Sansy.”

Sans doesn’t budge. He glances at Papyrus, a silent question: _have they been like this the whole fucking night?_ Papyrus grimaces slightly in a way that means yes, they most certainly have. Yikes.

“So is everybody working on a guilt complex now or what?” Sans asks. He’s a little too frayed to try for tact and subtlety. “Because that’s my thing. Don’t bite my style. I’m here in basically one piece, not a double-volt battery, which I would’ve been without the collar and Red playing Demi Moore, so--”

“I’m Demi?” Red says. “I don’t think so, sweetheart. Not with these rugged good looks.”

“Suck it up, dude, you’re my hot pottery-loving widow,” Sans says. 

It occurs to him too late that he should’ve said Red’s hot widowhood was general and not specific to anyone, certainly not _his_ , but. Welp. Scrambling to take it back would just make things weirder. Better to cling to the slim hope Red didn’t notice. None of them are exactly at their best.

Red smirks, his eyelights bright and sharp. He definitely noticed. Fuck.

“Yet again, I have no fucking idea what you’re referencing,” Edge says. “But I appreciate the sentiment. I’ll try to keep my brooding to a minimum.”

Which means that Edge isn’t fixing to forgive himself, at least not yet. Like there’s anything to even be forgiven. Sans offers him a grin. “I mean, a little brooding looks good on you.”

Edge’s almost-smile is soft and fond, an echo of the way he looked at Sans when they were trading kisses in a hotel bed. “I’ll keep that in mind. Go on, then. We won’t be too far.”

It takes some doing to climb out of the bed with busted ribs, it turns out. and Papyrus gives him the worried puppy eyes the whole time. Sans isn’t exactly thrilled about splitting up either, but he’s less thrilled about the idea of Papyrus having to be in the heart of the lab while he’s dealing with a cascade of traumatic memory bullshit. Plus he doesn’t cherish the thought of being barebones in front of his little brother. He’s not Red, for fuck’s sake.

(But being barebones in front of _Red’s_ little brother has its appeal.)

“Call us if you need us!” Papyrus says sternly.

“Okay,” Sans says.

“Or if you just start to feel weirder than usual!”

“Okay.”

“Or if you get lonely!”

“Okay.”

“And if you take any longer than fifteen minutes, I _am_ coming to check that you weren’t kidnapped by void monsters again!”

“Okay.”

“Well,” Papyrus huffs, some of the wind taken out of his sails by Sans’s complete non-resistance. “So long as you understand.”

Sans grins easily at them as Red herds him to the shower, a grin that only lasts until they get to the elevator. Then it slips off, shattering at his feet. 

It’s been six years since he last stood in front of these doors. He wouldn’t even do it for Alphys when she asked him once, tentatively, to feed the analgamates on a really bad depression day. He never went deeper than the public part of the lab. He couldn’t.

But, well, until Gaster is dead or gone, Sans lives in this cage. He’s gonna have to do this some time.

“You good?” Red asks. He looks like he’s struggling with some memories of his own, not awful ones but bittersweet. 

Sans puts the broken pieces of his grin back on. Red can see the cracks, but Sans needs the mask right now. He needs all the help he can get. “Sure. Just getting nostalgic for the good old days.”

Red searches his face for a long moment, eyes narrowed, before he says, “How about you just sponge off in the sink or something?”

“Nope,” Sans says.

“You don’t gotta do this right now, you stubborn bastard,” Red says.

“Yeah, I do,” Sans says. “Wouldn’t you?”

“... heh.” Red takes Sans’s wrist like he thinks Sans might drift off otherwise. His thumb smoothes over the thin strip of leather that saved Sans’s soul. “Yeah, I would. We’re stupid like that.”

The elevator finally arrives, and its doors open with a cheery little ping. Sans takes a deep breath, steadying his nerves, and steps inside.

The lab has been waiting for him, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: the aftermath of Sans getting the shit kicked out of him; body horror; Red deals with his fear by getting up in Sans's face; all manner of Gaster BS including verbal and medical abuse and non-consensual soul touching; mention of vomiting; mention of Red cutting people's hands off for grabbing his collar and of the third degree burns left on them by Edge's intent. Please hmu if you think I missed something that needs to be warned for, I'm tossing this out in kind of a hurry before the plumber gets here.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> detailed content warnings in endnotes

Red never realized how much more expressive Sans has let himself get in the last couple months until the elevator doors open onto the darkened interior of the lab and Sans goes blank. His eyelights are still burning, two tiny points swimming in the darkness of his sockets, but there's nothing going on behind them. Or at least nothing Sans is willing to let anyone see.

(Red tells himself not to take that shit personally, but he’s always been a lousy listener.)

The stink of ozone and fear is cloying in the narrow confines of the elevator, rubbing every one of Red's instincts wrong like sandpaper on a burn, but Red still says, “Hey, you remember when I said you don’t have to do this right now? ‘Cause it was like five seconds ago. There’s a sink--”

Sans pulls free of Red’s grip on his wrist and takes his first step off the elevator like a man spitting in the executioner’s face as he takes his last step off the gallows. His shoulders are set in a stubborn line, or at least what would be a stubborn line if he wasn’t guarding his broken ribs on one side. He hesitates for a fraction of a second, not long enough that most people would notice, and then _strolls_ into the childhood trauma zone like he’s not bothered a bit.

“Or we could do that,” Red says, following him. Like hell is he letting Sans wander around on his lonesome until this is over, maybe with some friendly stalking for a couple weeks after just in case. “Anybody ever tell you you’re a stubborn asshole?”

“Just you,” Sans says. He’s trying damned hard to sound unbothered by all of this, but his voice ends up sounding a little too flat. 

Their progress is slow. Sans is clearly hurting too bad to move any faster, his every step careful and deliberate so as not to jar his aching bones. Monitors set into the walls blink to life as they pass by. It’s surreal, the little differences between this lab and the one Red remembers. Less screaming, for one. Fewer rooms. (Although he thinks there might be another several rooms hidden behind that convenient chisps vending machine.) The smell of dust in the air sure is familiar, although damned if Red knows why it would be so dusty in here--

Oh, right. Now he remembers. Those amalgamates, the poor bastards who Fell and got back up all gooey and conjoined. He tried to put them out of his mind as soon as he heard about them. He has nothing to feel guilty about. He doesn’t have to apologize for being the lucky bastard who got out of Falling intact.

“You want the tour?” Sans asks.

“Sounds like a barrel of laughs, but nah,” Red says. “Your bro’s gonna come to check on us if we ain’t done in fifteen minutes.”

Sans huffs in a way Red recognizes from his own intimate experience with having broken ribs as the closest approximation of a laugh that doesn’t hurt like hell. “I give it ten.”

“Pretty much. Didn’t figure you wanted him to get an eyeful of those pretty bones of yours.”

That makes Sans finally look at him, his grin bitterly amused. “Unless you get off on fractures--”

Yeah, like every one of Sans’s bruises doesn’t make Red want to burn the fucking world down. But the hallway is opening up into a bigger room, neat rows of little beds, and Red gets the feeling Sans doesn’t exactly have fond memories of sleeping in here when he was a kid. So Red says, “Don’t kinkshame me, sweetheart.”

The familiar bullshit keeps Sans’s attention on him. Sans doesn’t even look at where he’s going, moving on pure spatial memory as he says, “Somebody has to.”

“Funny, I seem to recall you liking some of my kinks just fine,” Red says. “What with all the orgasms and everything.”

“Faked ‘em,” Sans says.

Nice to know he’s still bitey. Red grins. “Oh yeah?”

“Every one of them.”

“Real convincing,” Red says. He doubts Sans doesn’t realize that this is a blatant distraction, but Sans hasn’t looked away from him once. “Tell me your secrets, David Copperfield. How’d you make the jizz you got all over me yesterday morning?”

“Glue, water, contact lens solution, baking soda, and a little blue food coloring,” Sans says. His grin is a shadow of itself, but it’s there. “The tricky part was getting the squirt gun in my pelvis without you noticing.”

“Wow, you found a squirt gun shaped just like a dick,” Red says. “And your acting is amazing. I still got scratches on my back from where you tried to climb me.”

“What can I say? I’m method,” Sans says. “Uh, sorry about the scratches, though.”

“I’m not,” Red says.

And then they’ve crossed the threshold of the room with the beds, back into a narrower hallway. Sans glances back over his shoulder like he can only stand to look at his past from a distance, his gaze lingering on one of the sad little beds. Then he turns his back on it and keeps walking.

When Sans speaks again, there’s not even a trace of laughter in his voice. “When I fell on you last night, did that goop get on you?”

Welp. Sans isn’t in the mood for the gentle approach, apparently. Red returns the favor. “Yeah. I washed it off when they were done patching you up.”

He leaves out the part where he painstakingly cleaned Sans’s face and hands off first. Now that Sans is awake and alert, that’d be just kinda embarrassing. Maybe Sans somehow hasn’t put together that there’s only one person who could’ve made sure he didn’t wake up smeared in nightmare goop.

Sans darts a look at him, head to toe, like Red is going to start seizing or spontaneously sprouting oily black tentacles from his sockets. “You didn’t get it in your mouth or on your soul or anything, did you?”

“Nope.”

Sans stops mid-step, turning towards him. His eyelights are desperate in his blank face as he demands, “Are you sure?”

“I was careful,” Red says. “Y’know, I _did_ work in a lab for a while. Pretty much cured me of the habit of jerking off with every mystery goop I can find.”

Sans relaxes just a little, his shoulders easing down from their protective hunch. His grin is pale. “Just most of ‘em.”

“I’m pretty selective about my mystery goop these days.” And so is Sans, but Red’s not gonna bring that up. Fastest way to ensure that Sans’s first stop after they get out of this lab is the men’s room of the nearest bar, down on his knees on the tiles just to prove something to himself. Damned if Red knows what. “Besides, I’ve been fiddling with that stain on your hoodie for a month or so now, and I haven’t had any symptoms.”

That’s meant to be reassuring, but Sans just stares at him, stricken. “I didn’t even think about that. Maybe Edge oughta take you to a healer. Hell, you both should go just in case.”

Sans must be pretty goddamn spooked if he’s suggesting they go anywhere near a doctor. Counting off on his fingers, Red says, “Okay, one, you couldn’t pry me or the boss out of this lab with a crowbar. Two, even the best healer in the world can’t cure something that doesn’t technically exist. Three, it doesn’t seem like the doc thinks Paps or the boss would make good batteries, just us. Four, I’m pretty sure that it ain’t as simple as that.”

“I didn’t start going downhill like this until a couple months ago, after he found me in the void,” Sans says. “I touched that goop with my bare hands, and I don’t remember if I got a chance to wash it off before, y’know, the emergency soul healing thing.”

“Maybe,” Red says. “Or maybe it was that last crack in your soul. Or maybe he started getting stronger when the boss healed you.”

Sans grimaces. “Uh, yeah, how about we never bring that possibility up to Edge.”

If Red knows his brother, Edge has already thought of that possibility on his own and is kicking himself for it as they speak just in case, like guilt is a three-for-one sale on mustard and they might run out. He shrugs and continues, “We don’t know. But my bet is that the meds primed your system and him marking you in the void was the trigger. It’s a two part process.”

That sparks some memory, apparently, because a furrow appears between Sans’s brows. He says slowly, “He did mention something about how he’d perfected the drug regimen by now, so he could…”

Sans trails off, but his expression darkens enough that Red can guess what he was about to say: _so he could use it on you._

No one but Edge has ever thought Red needs protecting. (Or that he deserves it.) Now some soft bastard whose stats scream that he’s free EXP for the taking has it in his head that it’s his job to keep Red safe. It’s hilarious. Insulting, even. But...

Yeah. But. That’s what usually gets him in trouble where Sans is concerned. The ‘but’ always gets him, and not just because Sans has an ass you could bounce a quarter off of and get back fifty cents. 

“Right,” Red says. “So he ain’t dosed me yet. I should be fine.” 

As far as gentle reassurances go, it isn’t one for the romance novels, but Sans looks a little less convinced that he needs to dunk himself in bleach and scrub until he’s raw. Sans deadpans, “Thanks for the optimism, Pollyanna Sunshine,” and starts shuffling towards the shower again. Red falls easily into step beside him.

“That’s me. Always looking on the bright side.” Try as he might, Red can’t quite resist adding, “Real sweet of you to worry, though.”

Turns out Sans isn’t so worried that he won’t give Red the finger.

For all the subtle and not-so-subtle differences in their labs, the safety shower is in the same place as it was in Red’s universe, although this one looks much fancier. There’s a curtain and everything, and it’s big enough to accommodate a boss monster with a helluva rack of horns. When Sans tugs the curtain back, Red sees that there’s a soap dispenser as well as the usual bottles of disinfectants and reagents. A virulently pink washcloth, the extra-scratchy kind his Alphys used to use because it kept her scales soft, dangles from a hook on the dispenser. 

Sans starts peeling out of his shorts and shoes. The light is dim in the bathroom, but not so dim Red can’t still see the lingering bruises all over Sans’s body. He maps them with his eyes, silently adding them to the growing inventory of reasons that he’s going to grind Gaster’s fingers to dust under his bootheel. Not all at once. No, one at a time. Real slow. It’s the least that fucker deserves for trying to put his filthy hands on Sans’s--

“Are you just gonna stand there and watch like a creeper?”

Rudely jerked out of his idle fantasies, Red meets Sans’s eyes. Sans never looked so vulnerable in his barebones as he does right now. But there’s nothing vulnerable about the set of Sans’s jaw, like he’s pissed off with the world or Red or himself. All of the above, maybe.

“Depends,” Red says. “You want me to do something else? ‘Cause I ain’t leaving.”

Sans turns away, twisting the dial for the shower so viciously that it’s surprising the damned thing doesn’t come off in his hands. Then he steps over the rim into the tub. The water pressure looks weak as hell, but Sans does a whole body flinch as the spray hits his shiny new bruises. He hisses out a long breath through his teeth but stays put, his shoulders hunched and miserable. He looks like Doomfanger after a trip through Waterfall.

There’s plenty of room in the shower. Fuck, does Red want to strip off and join him. The only reason he managed to keep his shit mostly together last night was the promise that when Sans was awake, Red could painstakingly scrub away any lingering trace of Gaster. He needs the reassurance that Sans is in one piece. 

But Sans has got plenty of reasons to want some space right now.

“Sansy,” Red says, and Sans’s tense shoulders twitch like he’s as keyed up as Red is. “You were the one who was freaked out about being contagious, not me.”

Sans grabs the washcloth and smacks the lever on the soap dispenser a few times. The smell of artificial cherry blossoms and something citrusy fills the bathroom as he suds the washcloth up. Conversationally, he says, “So it’s got nothing to do with Gaster trying to touch my soul.”

That time it’s Red who flinches. Yeah, they need to talk about it, but he was going to wait until after Sans had scrubbed off and put his clothes back on. “You don’t--”

“I don’t understand?” Sans says, dangerously calm.

Red keeps his mouth shut. After last night, yes, Sans goddamn well understands. Probably better than Red does, even though Sans’s universe is so stupid about souls. But there’s no way of winning because Sans seems just as frustrated by Red’s silence, roughly scrubbing at his shoulder and collarbone with the washcloth. As roughly as he can manage while he’s trying not to move wrong and jar his ribs, anyway. 

Finally, Red says, “I’ve done bad things.”

That makes Sans turn to look at him, surprised. He’s flushed faintly blue with the heat of the water, blinking away the last traces of dried black fluid from his sockets as cherry blossom suds bleed down the unfractured side of his ribcage. Red remembers Edge calling Sans lovely when he was drunk on kisses and warm from their bed, but it figures that Red notices it now, when Sans is beat to hell and kinda pissed off. “No shit, Sherlock. You think I’m scared of you?”

“I know you ain’t.” Red comes close enough to feel the humid warmth of the shower like a hand on his bones, but he doesn’t reach out and touch. “I tortured people.”

Sans studies him. The hand with the washcloth clutched in it still rests on his collarbone, his thumb absently rubbing where Red’s mark was before waves of healing washed it away. “I know.”

“Most of ‘em didn’t deserve it. They were just in my way.”

“All right,” Sans says. 

It’s a simple acknowledgement. He’s not saying it’s okay. He’s not offering forgiveness. Absolution isn’t in their wheelhouse. But Sans knows exactly what Red is, and he’s not going anywhere. That’s as close to forgiveness as Red is ever going to get.

“But I would never put my hands on anybody’s soul while they begged me to stop,” Red says.

Sans’s expression softens almost imperceptibly, like he thinks Red is asking for reassurance or something. “I know you wouldn’t, dude. It’s okay.”

“You don’t get it,” Red says. It’s too desperate, and he needs to calm the fuck down before he starts yelling at Sans when he’s shellshocked and scared, but he can’t. The anger claws at his soul from the inside, and he just keeps running his mouth. “Most people from our whole shithole universe wouldn’t, and not just ‘cause the emotional backlash would probably kill you. We don’t force ourselves on somebody’s soul. Even me. Even the fucking tyrant. We don’t _do_ that.”

“I know,” Sans says again. It’s almost gentle. “Red, he didn’t actually do it. He tried, but the collar held him off.”

“Those nightmares,” Red says. 

Sans immediately averts his eyes. “Yeah, well, that didn’t happen either. Technically.”

“Technically,” Red echoes, trying to choke his rage back. The last thing Sans needs right now is Red to make it about his own goddamn feelings. “How many times?”

Sans shrugs. “Three or four? ‘M not sure.”

Yeah, like Red believes that Sans doesn’t remember the exact number of times he dreamed about Gaster ripping his soul out. “When you were a kid--”

“No,” Sans says, locking eyes with him again so Red can see that he’s telling the truth. “Not until the nightmares. And now, I guess.”

Small mercies. Bad enough for Gaster to have been tinkering with Sans’s soul when Sans was a kid without him actually laying hands on it. Red exhales, long and slow, trying to keep his temper. “Okay.”

For a moment, he can see Sans thinking about something. The water drums down, still blissfully hot. This close to the Core, it’ll never run out. Red’s boots are getting wet but like hell is he moving unless Sans tells him to go. 

“So I guess it’s like rape to you guys,” Sans says, almost managing to sound clinical except for the fact that he stuttered over the word just a little.

“No, rape is like rape,” Red says. “Ain’t even close to the same thing. I mean, unless he was getting off on it. You didn’t say if--”

Before that horrifying possibility can fully take root in Red’s skull, Sans shakes his head. “He touched his soul, but I don’t think he could actually feel anything. His expression looked like he might as well have been holding a goopy rock.”

Well, that’s something, anyway. Red exhales. “Okay. But somebody putting themselves in your head when you don’t want them to? Fucking around with the thing that makes you you? It’s still…” There’s no good word for it, no matter how hard Red searches for one. Nothing that does it justice. He has to settle for, “It’s still _wrong_.”

Maybe that word doesn’t mean much coming from a torturer, a murderer, but Sans seems to understand him. Sans considers him for a long moment, then reaches out, hooks his fingers in Red’s collar, and yanks. Red has a split second to choose to either overbalance and fall on Sans or to step over the rim of the tub into the spray, clothes and all. He goes for the second one, barely catching himself on the wall beside the soap dispenser. 

“Well, then it’s a good thing it didn’t happen, huh?” Sans says, glaring up at Red like he’s daring him to contradict him. There’s no question who’s got who in hand right now when Sans is gripping Red’s collar tight. “I’m not fucking broken.”

“I know you ain’t,” Red says. “Never said you were.”

“Great,” Sans says, his eyes burning fever-bright. “So put the kid gloves back in their box before their parents start wondering where they got to. I’m fine. I dunno how to deal with you when you’re nice to me.”

Like hell he’s fine. Tired and shocky enough that he’s gone numb, maybe, but that ain’t fine. But if he doesn’t wanna deal with it right now, Red’ll play along. “That metaphor is fucked up.”

“You’re fucked up,” Sans says predictably.

Red snorts. “Nice of you to notice. So I guess you decided you’re not Typhoid Mary?”

Sans winces. “No. I mean, I don’t know. But you’re probably right. If the goop was just a simple one-step vector, you’d be having seizures and nightmares by now.”

“Oh baby, tell me I’m right again,” Red says. “Say it real slow.”

“I said _probably_ right, jackass. Don’t get your hopes up.” When Red chuckles and goes to nuzzle Sans’s mouth, Sans quickly turns his face away. Sans says ruefully, “No offense, but swapping spit after I was puking up goop seems like tempting fate.”

Fair enough, although fuck knows Sans has gotten various kinds of fluid all over Red in the last month or so without a problem. Red murmurs against his jaw, “Still trying to protect me, huh?”

Sans tenses up like he thinks Red is taking offense. When Red laughs, the sound soft and rough and meant to tell Sans that he won’t bite, Sans’s fingers flex on the collar, his thumb coming to rest on the buckle. “What can I say? You’re just too much dumbass for only one man to wrangle, even Edge.”

“Guilty as charged,” Red says. 

By some impulse, he presses a kiss to the bruise on Sans’s cheekbone, his teeth barely touching the feverish warmth of healing bone. It stirs up old memories of kissing Edge’s bruises and scrapes when he was still learning to toddle in the filthy alleys of the capital. Red had been six-ish, maybe, and heard somewhere or other that that was what parents were supposed to do when you got banged up. Seeing as they didn’t have parents, somebody had to step up in the booboo-kissing department.

Funny. Red forgot about that. On purpose, probably. That naive little kid who just wanted to do right by his brother was another victim whose dust he scattered so he and Edge could survive.

Sans has gone very still. Before anybody gets any ideas, Red pulls back and gives Sans a lazy grin. “Lemme just text Paps to reset the clock on those fifteen minutes. I dunno if you want him to walk in on us showering together.” 

“I hate to tell you, but it isn’t gonna be particularly exciting.” Unfortunately, Sans lets go of his collar. He glances doubtfully at Red’s pelvis before offering, “I could probably give you a handjob or something?”

“Hard to resist when you sound so enthusiastic about it, but nah, I’m good,” Red says. He turns away, takes his phone out of his inventory, and carefully holds it out of the spray as he texts Papyrus and Edge: _all ok here. just got in shower. need another 15 min._

Almost immediately, the phone pings with Papyrus’s answer: _YES FINE BUT PLEASE RESTRAIN FROM ANY HANKY AND/OR PANKY!!!_

Red snorts, sends back a thumbs up emoji, and puts his slightly damp phone back in his inventory. His Alphys built the damn thing to survive being dropped in the water at the dump, set on fire, and run over by a tank. She demanded that he test the prototype for her by firing a blaster at it, and it weirdly worked better afterwards. She really knew her shit. It’ll be fine. 

He takes his boots off, tossing them haphazardly out of the shower so they can dry out a little before he has to put them back on. When he gives Sans a look, gauging his mood, Sans sighs. “If we’ve got to worry about goop particulates, a wet shirt isn’t going to protect your soul. Can you put it above our heads or something, out of the spray, or is that hardcore kinky shit where you come from?”

“Like a disco ball?” Red asks. “Yeah, honey, you’ve found my hard limit. It’s Saturday Night Fever.”

Sans winces. “I know it’s stupid, but--”

“It’s not stupid,” Red says. Honestly, even if it was, he’d do no end of stupid shit right now to make Sans look marginally less terrified.

He steps briefly out of the shower and draws out his soul, letting it hover above his hand. Sans doesn’t flinch, just examines Red’s scarred and battered soul like he’s looking for black fluid to start leaking out the cracks. He’s clearly not even a little scared Red might use it to hurt him, like he trusts bone-deep that what almost happened last night with Gaster has nothing to do with the two of them. 

(Yeah, so maybe Red has some squishy feelings about that. So what.)

Red’s soul can’t go far from him before it starts to hurt, only a couple feet, but he can put it out of the reach of the spray. It casts its own dim light, illuminating the little room. And Sans’s bruises, but Red’s trying not to fixate on that. He peels out of his wet clothes and drops them in a pile by his boots, then climbs back in the shower.

“Congrats, we’re both naked,” Sans says. “Now what?”

“Now you gimme the washcloth because squirming around with busted ribs is a real bitch,” Red says. 

Sans hesitates. Then his expression changes into one Red recognizes from the mirror. He can almost hear Sans think: _I almost died, so fuck it._ He’s not surprised when Sans shoves the washcloth at him like he’s throwing down a gauntlet.

Red adds more soap, since most of it washed out while they ran their mouths. The floral-sweet scent of it makes him kinda sorry he didn’t think to steal Edge’s fancy-ass soap, which smells like home and safety, but this’ll do. He puts a hand on Sans’s hip, guiding him closer so he’s out of the spray. When he takes the washcloth to Sans’s collarbone, Sans squints his eyes shut like Doomfanger basking smugly in a sunbeam.

“Hurts?” Red asks, just to be sure, and Sans shakes his head without bothering to open his eyes. So Red keeps going, working his way down Sans’s right arm and then the left. He’s thorough, taking his time to get between Sans’s ulna and radius. He already washed the goop off Sans’s hands last night, but he gives them another pass to be sure he didn’t miss anything. 

He didn’t see the bruises on the palms of Sans’s hands last night. There are matching ones on his knees, like it took a couple times to get up off the floor and Sans kept collapsing on all fours only to painstakingly try again to get to his feet. 

Three broken ribs and Gaster looming at his back, but damned if Sans didn’t make it to his feet and up a flight of stairs, and damned if he didn’t blow that off when he told them what happened, like it was nothing to write home about it.

That’s Red’s sweetheart, all right. Tough as nails under all that squish, killed a king with that clever mouth, and there’s nobody around but Edge to appreciate it. Red doesn’t miss home, but he wouldn’t mind rubbing in somebody’s face that Sans is in _Edge’s_ collar and nobody else can have him because Sans likes them best.

Speaking of the collar. Red’s hand lingers there, feeling the reassuring hum of Edge’s protective intent. It feels a little weaker, like it usually does when the collar has to zap an unwelcome hand. Mostly to himself, Red says, “Gotta remind him to re-up this when we get back.”

Sans makes a vague acknowledging noise. “Why does he feel guilty?”

“You know him,” Red grumbles. He gets more soap and goes back to washing San’s chest, above the bruises and fractures. “He feels bad ‘cause he forgot you for a couple minutes. Y’know, before I smacked it back into him.”

With a frown, Sans says, “Well, yeah. Weird void shit. I’m not gonna take it personally.”

“He’ll take it personally enough for both of you,” Red says. “Idiot thinks he’s responsible for the whole goddamn universe. Guilt’s easier than admitting there’s nothing he coulda done to stop it.”

Sans cracks one eye open to give Red a look. Dryly, he asks, “Is that right?”

“That’s different, sweetheart,” Red says. Edge might’ve forgotten, but Red remembered everything and he still left Sans to Gaster’s tender mercies and walked away. If he’d just gone into the kitchen instead of letting that nothingness drive him out…

“It’s really not,” Sans says, eyes narrowing. “You couldn’t--”

Suddenly, Sans’s breath catches. Red yanks his hand back like he was scalded. “Shit. Did I hurt you?”

Sans clears his throat and averts his eyes to somewhere over Red’s left shoulder. “No.”

“You sure?”

With a crooked grin, Sans says, “You were fondling my sternum, dude.”

It takes a moment for Red to figure out what the fuck that’s supposed to mean. (In his defense, he’s running on no sleep and a fuckton of adrenaline.) When it finally sinks in, it does wonders for Red’s mood. Sans looks flustered, sure, but not uncomfortable with Red accidentally getting a little handsy. Red grins back. “Oops. My bad. Sorry about the boner.”

“Fuck you,” Sans says. “It’s not my fault you’re all...”

The vague gesture Sans makes is not particularly illuminating as to what Red is all. Red feels his grin widen. He wrings out the washcloth so that white suds pour down that side of Sans’s ribcage, gliding over the bruises and the faint blue light shining out of the seams where Sans’s fractured ribs are knitting back together. Then it drips off the base of his ribs, pattering down at their feet. Seeing as he can’t exactly give the fractured part of Sans’s ribs a thorough scrubbing, that’ll have to be good enough.

Of course, now there are suds painting the front of Sans’s pelvis, working their way down with agonizing slowness, like somebody running their fingertip over those sleek, heat-flushed bones. And by someone, Red definitely means him. They’re both too tired and strung out to fuck, even if Sans was up for it, but still. That’s a view Red would have to be dead not to appreciate.

Blissfully unaware that Red is thinking dirty thoughts about those fat beads of water dripping off his pubic symphysis, Sans studies the perversely pretty lightshow of his broken ribs. When he goes to experimentally prod at them, Red swats his hand away. “Don’t fucking poke at it, dumbass. Paps is a damned good healer. It might not scar if you leave it alone.”

“Your Paps or mine?” Sans asks with idle interest. When Red ignores him, Sans continues easily, like he’s pointing out the sky is blue, “Yeah, my brother is the coolest. Worried I’ll ruin my good looks?”

Red scoffs. “Believe me, you’d still be plenty pretty--”

“Nope.”

“-- but scars can ache like a bitch when it rains. Now lemme get your back.”

Sans pauses just long enough to make it seem like it’s his idea when he turns around, totally not because Red told him to. Red takes the washcloth to him, easing around the wide bruise across the back of Sans’s ribs. If Red had to lay bets, he’d say that Sans’s back smacked into a cabinet or a wall when Gaster booted him in the ribs. The thought makes him want to murder something.

But of course he’s not _allowed_ to murder that bastard. There’s no point in revenge if it kills Sans in the process. He’ll just have to settle for slow torture instead. 

“You never said that they ached,” Sans says suddenly.

“What?” Red asks, startled out of his bloody daydreams. 

“Your scars. You never said they hurt.”

“Sometimes,” Red says. “It’s not a big deal.”

“Yeah, well, seeing as you get all up on my jock about painkillers, tell me next time you’re hurting and we can smoke some weed,” Sans says. “Y’know, if we don’t all die in the next couple days.”

“Nobody’s dying,” Red says. “For one thing, you don’t got permission.”

“Is that how that works?” Sans asks, amused. “I’m functionally immortal until I get the right paperwork signed in triplicate?”

“Yep,” Red says. “It kept me alive this long, anyway. You really wanna deal with how pissed off the boss would be if he had to drag _both_ of us back from the dead?”

Sans wheezes out a laugh and then curses. “Don’t do that, you asshole.”

“Can’t help it. I’m just too hilarious,” Red says. “You wanna hear a dead baby joke?”

Sans groans from the bottom of his soul. “I’ve had a bad enough couple days as it is. Don’t torture me with your shitty jokes on top of it.”

“Suit yourself, you pleb,” Red sighs. He repeats the process of wringing out the washcloth above the bruise and watches the suds run down the intricate path of Sans’s vertebra. Then he soaps up again and wraps the washcloth around Sans’s spine. Sans grunts, but before Red can draw back, Sans leans into him a little. Red indulges himself by nuzzling Sans’s shoulder as he scrubs his spine clean, working his way down vertebrae by vertebrae. 

Sans tips his head back against Red’s shoulder the way he does when Edge is healing him. By the time Red reaches the top of his sacrum, Sans is plastered against him, all lazy and warm and comfortable. The sheer satisfaction of it is like taking a deep drag of quality weed, stronger than anything Red would’ve expected from something that doesn’t involve murder, sex or sex after murder.

“Some full-service car wash this is,” Sans drawls.

“Oh yeah?” Red asks. “You got complaints?”

“You missed some spots.”

“Heh.” Red rests his hand on Sans’s iliac crest, idly tracing its curve with his thumb. Sans shivers against him. Red’s libido actually manages to perk up a little, resurrected from the slab. It’s a goddamn miracle. He turns his head and presses his mouth to the place where Sans’s shoulder meets his throat, drinking in Sans’s pleased hum like he’s dying of thirst. “Were you thinking of anywhere in particular?”

“Well, my ankles are being cruelly neglected, for one.”

“Aw.” Red’s fingertip scrapes along Sans’s iliac crest, trailing down to his pubic bone. “Tragic. Where else?”

Sans hesitates for a long moment. Then, almost managing to sound as off-handed as he’s trying to, he says, “My throat could use some work.”

Red’s pubic symphysis gives a weak, hopeful throb. He swallows against his suddenly dry throat and says, failing just as hard to sound casual, “You sure about that?”

“Pretty sure some goop got on there,” Sans says. “‘Cause, uh. Gravity.”

There’s no soap left on the washcloth, but Red brings it to Sans’s throat anyway. It’s as transparent an excuse as _because gravity_ , held loosely in his hand as he carefully curls his fingers around Sans’s cervical spine. Sans makes a throaty, vulnerable little noise that makes Red feel like he could get in a fistfight with entropy and win. He leans back into Red, tension in his spine going slack like…

Like this makes Sans feel as safe as Red does when Edge grabs him by the collar and holds on.

“Lemme take care of that for you,” Red murmurs, and Sans shudders. Not in horror or pain, but like all it takes is the filthy promise in Red’s voice to get Sans’s motor purring. Damned if Red doesn’t have to struggle to keep his magic from slamming into place in his pelvis, because Sans makes him a stupidly horny teenager all over again. “There you go. That’s better, ain’t it?”

“It’s a start,” Sans says, his voice just a little too raw. “Now redo that mark you put on my collarbone.”

Ain’t it just like Sans to order Red around when Red’s literally got him by the throat. It’s all too tempting to restake the only claim Sans’ll let Red put on him, but he knows damn well broken ribs hurt like a motherfucker, and the stubborn bastard won’t take any meds for it. Pain is tricky. It’d be so easy for just a little more of it to take things from mostly bearable to outright excruciating within the span of a second.

But hell, it’s not like Red doesn’t also know what it’s like to want to reclaim his own body after somebody hurt him. To make that pain his own. To make it _matter_. 

Finally, Red says, “They still gotta heal those ribs some more. The bruise wouldn’t stick.”

Not that Red minds doing it as many times as it takes, but he’d like the pain involved to be the sexy kind where Sans goes all hot and desperate even as he denies getting off on being bitten, not the grinding, exhausting broken bone kind. Nobody could get off on that shit, even Red.

“Oh,” Sans says. The disappointment in his voice that Red won’t do it right the fuck now does unfair things to Red’s soul. “Right. That makes sense.”

“I’m not gonna leave you hanging.” Red pets the place on Sans’s throat where a collar would rest, dragging his thumb over the sensitive magic binding Sans’s vertebra together. Sans exhales, a shivery noise, and Red presses an indulgent kiss to his shoulder. “As soon as they’ve fixed you up a little more, I’ll give you what you want.”

There’s a dry click as Sans swallows. “C’n I have a pony?”

“Sure, I’ll hunt down a pony for you,” Red says. “I’ll skin it and everything.”

“You’re the sweetest.”

(It occurs to Red that he’s just… holding Sans right now. By the throat, yeah, but holding him all the same. It figures that Red’s version of a comforting embrace involves a quiet threat that he could snap Sans’s neck like he snapped so many others. But then Sans isn’t exactly protesting.)

(Maybe because Sans could never just ask Red to hold him. Red could never just offer.)

“Anything else?” Red asks. His idle fingertips find the place where pubic bone meets ischium and just rest there. “‘Cause, y’know, I wouldn’t want you to leave unsatisfied.”

“Lifting your dialogue from cheesy pornos again?” Sans asks, all unimpressed snark and sweetly yielding bones. He’s leaning into Red so completely that if Red moves, Sans is gonna hit the floor. Good thing Red has no intention of moving.

“Aww, baby, you’ve got it all wrong,” Red tells him. Sans’s hips twitch restlessly, pressing into Red’s touch and then back against Red’s pelvis. “They lift their dialogue from me.”

It’s hard to tell if Sans’s groan is a complaint or because laughing hurts. “That’s it. Your bullshit finally killed me. I hope you can live with that on your conscience.”

“We talked about this, remember?” Red says. “No dying. That collar ‘round your wrist says we mean to keep you.”

Sans draws in a sharp breath that sort of hiccups at the end. But before Red can decide whether or not to let him go, Sans wraps his fingers loosely around Red’s wrist and holds him there. Almost evenly, Sans says, “What a shock. Turns out the guy with his hand around my throat who keeps jerking off on my pelvis and fondling my collar is a smidgen possessive.”

“Why’d you make that noise?” Red demands.

“Quit growling at me, jackass, I took a deep breath and my ribs got cranky,” Sans says. “And you’ve got your fingers on my--”

Someone awkwardly clears their throat. Sans immediately tries to launch himself out of Red’s arms like a startled cat, moves all wrong, and curses both loudly and creatively. Red grabs him before he breaks his stupid, pretty neck and soothes, “It’s just the boss.”

Judging from the indignant look Sans gives him, it wasn’t really Gaster he was worried about busting in at the moment, it was his brother. His priorities are kinda fucked up. Besides, like it’s strictly _Red’s_ fault that somebody just stumbled on them when he was fingering Sans’s pelvis?

Okay, it’s kind of Red’s fault. At least 50%. It seemed like a great idea at the time, with Sans warm and welcoming in his arms, his throat in Red’s grip and his hips moving gently into Red’s fingers.

… Yeah, it still sounds like a great idea.

“Hi, edgelord,” Sans says. “Uh, is Papyrus--”

“I convinced him to wait by the elevator,” Edge says. The curtain is closed, but Red would bet money that Edge is blushing at least as much as Sans is. “It’s been fifteen minutes. Did you re-injure yourself?”

“No,” Sans says on automatic, one hand pressed to his side. Then he stops to actually examine the fractures, which thankfully look no worse than they did when they strolled into the elevator. “I’m okay. Didn’t undo your hard work. Thanks for running interference.”

“Of course,” Edge says. “Brother, is there any particular reason that your soul is suspended three feet over your head?”

Red glances up at his soul. At the moment, it’s casting enough light that their silhouettes are painted on the shower curtain like porny shadow puppets. He doubts Edge actually let himself look for longer than a second, but a second was probably long enough to burn it into his memory. “Disco is back, boss.”

“Ah,” Edge says, so witheringly dry that Red would be surprised if Waterfall isn’t a desert now. Sounds like Red’s going to get chewed out later for getting up to hanky-panky when Sans is hurt. “That explains everything.”

“It was my idea,” Sans says.

A pause. Like he can’t quite help himself, Edge asks, “Which part?”

“Uh,” Sans says. It’s hard to tell if he’s blushing, considering the hot water beating down on them both, but yeah, he’s totally fucking blushing. “I mean. We probably weren’t going to, uh… I just wanted… Yeah. Both. Sorry.”

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Edge says, so gentle that Red’s soul gives a funny little twinge of discomfort and something else that he refuses to put his finger on.

Sans tugs the shower curtain aside just enough to stick his head out and give Edge that deceptively lazy grin that says he’s onto someone’s shit and wants them to know it. “Heh. I was gonna say the same to you.”

Edge sighs. “That is a discussion for when you have pants on.”

“Really? Seems like it’d be pretty quick and easy,” Sans says, still grinning like he’s not 100% ready to throw down re: Edge’s guilt complex. “You have nothing to apologize for, like you said. End of story.”

Another sigh, deeper this time. Edge says, “Fine. Just finish up what you’re doing, all right?”

“While you stand right here?” Red asks. “Hot.”

“Edgy Me?” Papyrus calls from what sounds like the other side of the lab. “Is everything all right? Are they engaging in naked tomfoolery?”

Judging by his expression, Sans goes through every stage of grief at once, and then does it backwards just for fun. Red chokes on a laugh.

“No,” Edge tells Papyrus, his voice raised to be heard. “Everything is fine. There is no tomfoolery whatsoever, naked or otherwise.”

“You’re my favorite, edgelord,” Sans says. “Now get out so I can put some clothes on. Like twelve layers of them. Also, FYI, I’m never having sex again. Sorry about the false advertisement.”

“That is a shame,” Edge says. “Will you still kiss me?”

Sans’s grin is surprisingly sweet. “Like hell I’m giving that up. When I can't taste goop, smooches are go.”

“Then I can be satisfied,” Edge says. Smooth motherfucker. “Unfortunately, even if sex wasn’t canceled, I don’t think I can convince your brother to go back downstairs to wait.”

“S’okay,” Sans says. “We’re done.”

Not exactly surprising. As soon as Sans heard Papyrus was on the same floor of the lab, Red knew the game was gonna be called on account of rain. But just to watch Sans squirm, he purrs, “But I’m all lathered up and wet.”

Sans cocks his head, his left eyelight flaring, which is the only warning Red gets before the showerhead is suddenly at an angle where the spray hits him directly in the face. Before he can use gravity magic to return the favor, the shower turns off. 

“Better?” Sans asks, all solicitous concern with a malicious glint in his eyes.

If there’s one thing Red knows from bitter experience, it’s that everybody breaks. It’s just a matter of how much they can take. Nine months ago, he would’ve bet that Sans would go down easy. But here Sans is, beaten and traumatized and still mean as ever. Still standing. Still theirs.

Red wipes a hand over his face, gathering up the excess, and then flicks it at Sans. “Yeah. It’ll do."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: This is still the aftermath of Sans getting attacked by Gaster, which means broken bones, body horror, discussion of noncon soul-touching, and Sans worrying that the goop may be a disease vector. Red mentions torturing people in Underfell. There's a discussion of noncon soul-touching and whether it's comparable to rape in Underfell culture. Possible embarrassment squick (Edge interrupts their shower when Red has his fingers on Sans's pubic bone and Papyrus yells from the other side of the lab, horrifying Sans). Mention of Sans killing Fellgore. Please hmu if you think I missed anything that needs to be warned, I'm really scattered today because of personal stuff but I still wanted to get this out.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> detailed content warnings in the endnotes

Of course Papyrus doesn’t wait by the elevators. Sans walks out of the shower room to find Papyrus sitting on one of the sad little beds, frowning thoughtfully at the room around him, his hands folded neatly in his lap.

The sight of him there, like they never got out, immediately snuffs out any fragile sense of chill Sans might’ve gotten back. Just grinds it out under its boot heel. He freezes in place, struggling to breathe through the kneejerk urge to grab Papyrus and run. Doesn’t matter where. Just somewhere other than here.

Involuntarily, he glances at Edge, who’s currently propping up a wall. Before Edge even has time to arch a brow, Sans looks away; it’s monumentally shitty of him to expect Edge to keep Papyrus from walking around the lab. Papyrus has as much history with this hellhole as Sans does, and now he remembers things Sans had no right to hide from him in the first place. 

This isn’t about Sans. He can’t let it be about him. It’s about goddamn time it’s about Papyrus.

Papyrus doesn’t say anything as Sans crosses the room. It’s not until Sans sits down beside him, trying not to wince as his ribs twinge, that Papyrus asks, “Was this my bed?”

“Yeah,” Sans says. He doesn’t even have to check to be sure. It’s only for Papyrus’s benefit that he tugs the blanket back and the pillow out of the way so that he can see the little skull scratched in one of the bedrails. “See? You wanted to make sure nobody tried to switch them on you when you weren’t looking.”

Papyrus stares at the skull like it holds the secrets of the universe, then reaches out and carefully runs his fingertips over it. There's wonder in his voice when he says, “I remember that.”

Sans screwed this up so bad. He fucked up by bringing Papyrus here when they were kids, and he fucked up even harder by hiding it like that’d absolve him of his guilt, telling himself the whole time that Papyrus couldn’t be hurt by what he didn’t remember.

Ha. Yeah, that turned out great.

He doesn’t know that he can ever make up for this. He has to try anyway. Papyrus deserves that much. 

He offers, "I c'n walk you through the rest of the lab if you want. See if I can fill in the blanks."

That makes Papyrus turn to look at him, a furrow deepening between his brows. The intensity of that look makes Sans want to glance away, but he doesn’t. Finally, Papyrus says, "You really would, wouldn't you?"

Sans shrugs wearily. "Well, yeah.”

They look at each other for a long moment, a whole silent conversation passing between them. A lot of things they couldn’t talk about out loud. Mistakes and forgiveness, protection and freedom. The ways they hurt each other without meaning to, and that they still love each other anyway.

"I recognize that this is a gesture on your part," Papyrus says. "And I do appreciate it! But I also think you might throw up if you tried to take me on a childhood trauma walking tour, and I don't really want to deal with that? Not to mention the uncomfort of puking when your ribs are broken. You can just vacuum the living room when we get home."

Sans swallows a shaky laugh that would hurt like a bitch. "Paps--"

"No," Papyrus says simply. And that's that. No flex in the statement, no room to argue. He's not budging. After a moment, Papyrus gives him a brave, slightly wobbly smile. "Besides, the memories are coming back on their own. I don’t think Edgy Me has another shirt to borrow if I tried to make them come faster and started bleeding out of my face again!”

"Okay,” Sans says. “If you change your mind--”

“I won’t,” Papyrus says. “But in the unlikely case that I do, you’re on the top of my list of potential tour guides! Er, so long as you promise not to throw up.”

“I’ll give you a no vomit guarantee,” Sans says. It’s not the most comfortable thing in the world, but he leans over and bumps Papyrus with his shoulder. Papyrus fondly pats him on the head like he’s the dog.

(Fuck, Sans hopes the dog’s okay.)

With that momentarily resolved, Sans finally looks at Edge and Red, who are lurking with one at each door into the room. Edge politely doesn’t make eye contact, waiting for a cue that they’re done, but Red is shamelessly watching like this is the best soap opera ever. When Sans narrows his eyes at him, Red gives him a grin that silently and pointedly reminds Sans of all the times he’s stuck his non-existent nose in Red’s family business. Up to and including basically throwing a raging, half-naked Red at Edge that one time. Payback’s a bitch.

“We should do the planning thing downstairs," Papyrus says abruptly, breaking Sans and Red's staredown. He looks as uncomfortable in this cold, silent lab as Sans feels. "Sans won't be able to concentrate otherwise."

Happy to take the blame, Sans says, "Good thinking, bro.” 

Thankfully, it’s a short walk to the elevator. Sans is a little too banged up to move quickly. Papyrus keeps one hand on his shoulder the whole time while looking around wildly at every single noise. Red looks downright relaxed, hands in his pockets and his posture loose and easy, except that when the air conditioning kicks suddenly on, his magic flares sharply like he just barely kept himself from blowing a hole in the wall. And Edge...

Edge looks like he did in his own universe, tense and distant. Untouchable. It hurts to see him like that again. They were supposed to be safe here. Took nine months to convince them of that, at least enough that they started to let their guard down a little. But it turns out they’re not safe after all, because--

(Sans is so useless he can’t do something as simple as getting a fucking pizza coupon without causing problems.)

\-- Gaster was waiting in the void. Hardly seems fair after everything Red and Edge have been through. Then again, fair is too much to expect from the universe, as far as Sans can tell.

When they reach the elevator, Red smacks the call button like it owes him money. Papyrus twitches at the noise, warily eyeing the snack machine that hides the deepest parts of the lab like he thinks the past will come crashing out and consume everything.

“You okay, dude?” Sans asks, craning his head back to look at Papyrus.

Without looking away from the vending machine, Papyrus says very quietly, “I don’t like it here.”

It’s right on the tip of Sans’s tongue to tell him that he doesn’t have to stay. Sans might be stuck here on pain of becoming a battery, but there’s no reason Papyrus needs to be here. But that’d be a stupid goddamn thing to say, because Papyrus isn’t leaving him here come hell or high water. Papyrus would probably take the suggestion to mean that Sans doesn’t believe he’s just as tough and capable as Red and Edge. Better to keep his mouth shut.

(Sans _can_ learn, even if it might take him a few billion repetitions, some painful conversations, and a therapist who doesn’t get paid enough to deal with his bullshit.)

"Yeah, I don't like it much either," is all Sans says. Papyrus gives him a tight, grateful smile. Sans continues, “Could use a fresh set of paint.”

“Or a shit-ton of gasoline and a match,” Red mutters.

Finally, the elevator comes. They all crowd in, and the doors close on the hungry darkness of the lab. Sans breathes a little easier. Apparently he's not the only one, because Red unbends enough to give Sans a crooked grin as his finger hovers over the button. "Going down, sweetheart?"

"Please keep the lewd elevator-based metaphors to a minimum,” Papyrus sighs. “Sans is sensitive about protecting the non-existent virtue of my non-existent ears.”

Red snickers.

As glad as Sans is that those two became buds, sometimes it’s hell on his peace of mind. As the elevator begins to whir to life, he props his back against a wall and hums some elevator music. Red should recognize it, seeing as it’s apparently his favorite. _Is you is or is you ain’t my baby…_

Red gives him a searing look. Sans grins just a little wider. After a tense moment where it seems like Red could go either way, amused or angry, Red snorts and slouches against the wall beside him with an amiable mutter of, “Asshole.”

“You started it,” Sans says.

"He has a point," Edge says, still standing sentinel at the doors like he means to put himself between them and the world. Which he does. Sans is a little worried about that, considering what they're up against. He's the only one allowed to throw himself on a grenade around here, seeing as he's the one who pulled the pin in the first place.

"Nobody asked you, boss," Red says.

Edge gives Red the finger without so much as turning his head, which means he doesn't see the traitorous hint of fondness in Red's grin. But Sans does.

The elevator ride is thankfully uneventful, as is the slow, awkward procession back up the escalator to Alphys's foldout bed. Sans is grateful to sit the fuck down. It hasn't been a long walk, but it _has_ been a long couple days, and he can feel his pulse beating sullenly in his fractured ribs.

Papyrus sits on the very edge of the bed and picks up his abandoned scarf. As his restless fingers begin to pick apart the stitches, he says brightly, "Well, shall we commit a planning?"

Right on cue, Sans’s mind goes immediately blank of any helpful suggestions whatsoever. Aside from the most obvious one, which is that it’d be safest not to fight Gaster at all. The coward’s option hasn’t worked out great for him so far.

Tempting as it is to suggest that they stay in the lab for a few weeks in the hopes that Gaster will just starve, he thinks Red would flip his shit. And he’s pretty sure it won’t be that easy. They’re already putting a lot of trust in shields that haven’t been recharged in a year, and probably not for a long time before that. Alphys wasn’t messing around with entropy engines after Gaster was gone, and she was too deep in a pit of depression to worry much about her own safety. 

(Not that he’d know anything about that.)

“Planning,” Sans says faintly. “Right. Uh…”

He’s frozen like a deer in headlights, and it must show on his face because Edge sits gingerly on the bed like he thinks Sans will shatter if he gets jostled. It was hard enough convincing Red that Gaster didn’t break him with a little attempted soul gropage, but Edge will be even harder. Just thinking about the work he’s gonna have to put in to convince Edge that he’s really okay is exhausting.

“The first thing we have to deal with is redoing the intent on your collar,” Edge says. “May I?”

“Sure, you might as well get in on the wrist-fondling action,” Sans says, offering Edge his wrist and a grin that feels weak. “Fuck knows Red does.”

Red gives an unapologetic shrug.

Edge glances sidelong at Red, who’s leaning against a wall beside the bed. Edge’s thumb runs along the line of the collar, and a thoughtful look comes into his eyes. He gives a noncommittal hum and starts feeding magic into the collar. The warmth of it is familiar and comforting, like a hug that only goes around Sans’s wrist.

(He thinks about what it’d be like to have the collar where it’s meant to be. If Edge’s fingers wrapped about his throat would feel as good as Red’s. And then he decides not to think about it because it’s not the fucking time. He can save it for the spank bank if all of them get out of this alive.)

“All I know is the second we try to take Sansy somewhere that ain’t got shields, Gaster’s gonna drag him out of the timeline again,” Red says, pulling smokes and a lighter out of his inventory. “Then it’s game over. Paps, you mind if I smoke?”

Papyrus grimaces. Reluctantly, he says, “I suppose. I don’t have lungs, after all. But it’s a nasty habit, Cherry!”

Red snorts. “I got plenty that are nastier, believe me.”

“Don’t come crying to me if your phalanges stain,” Papyrus says. “By which I mean definitely do come crying to me, I’m excellent at emotional support and I have a very good recipe of peroxide and baking soda to get out stubborn bone stains.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Red says, the words slightly garbled by the fact that he’s got his cigarette clenched between his teeth as he lights up. He takes the first drag and exhales it out slow. Sans realizes for the first time how fucking exhausted Red looks. Slim chance that Red got any shut-eye last night. Slimmer chance that Edge or Paps did, but they don’t need as much sleep. Red cracks one eye open to catch Sans watching him. “You wanna bum a smoke, sweetheart?”

Papyrus’s grimace intensifies. Sans could really go for a smoke, but he shakes his head. “I’m good.”

Red shrugs like _your loss_ and savors that cigarette like it’s the last one on the planet. 

“For once I agree with you, brother,” Edge says. His eyes are still fixed on the collar as he works. “We can’t risk stepping outside the shields even for a moment. If you were to open a door to the void while still inside the lab, do you think Gaster could come through? Whatever’s left of him, at least.”

“From what I remember, these shields were set up to keep things from going across the borders of the lab,” Sans says. He almost didn’t flinch when Edge used Gaster’s name. Edge’s thumb smooths over the inside of his wrist in silent apology. “Explosions, fires, wormholes, stuff like that. If we leave a door open for him, he wouldn’t be crossing the threshold. He’d already be inside. But I dunno. Nobody’s exactly tested this shit before.”

“Well, we won’t know until we try!” Papyrus says with a visible strain under his enthusiasm.

“Hate to be a buzzkill, Paps, but we also dunno whether the doc will still be able to drag Sans out of the timeline once he leaves the void,” Red says. “Could be that we’re just letting Gaster stroll in here and take him.”

“Okay, but it seems like being in the void is what gave him that power to begin with,” Sans says. “He sure as fuck couldn’t have thrown me and Edge into a different timeline before he fell in the Core.”

“It’s a rather steep risk to take on a guess,” Edge says.

Sans thinks of the Riverperson’s message back in Edge’s universe, when Unundyne was dragging Sans to what was supposed to be his execution: _he doesn’t see everything. He’s still just a man. Don’t forget._ On that extremely slim evidence, Sans decided to fling himself and Edge into the void to get away from Unundyne, and they’d survived. They’d gotten home.

(Of course, he didn’t realize at the time what the consequences of getting caught would have actually been. If he’d known then what he does now, he doesn’t think he could’ve done it. Unundyne would have just killed them. Which says something for the benefits of blissful ignorance, he guesses.)

“We’ve taken steeper,” Sans says. “But we could even the odds. If he’s using my magic, I could make sure there’s less for him to work with. I c’n burn through a lot of my magic reserves before we open the door.”

“Oh, great idea, sweetheart, ‘cept that means _you_ have less to keep you alive,” Red says. “It ain’t like he’s gonna stop just because he’s killing you. He’s already been killing you. He’ll use you up to the last drop. And if it looks like he lost, he’s gonna try his damnedest to take you out with him.”

“That does sound like him,” Papyrus says sourly. “He’s not a very good loser. Or winner. Or tie-er.”

“Exactly,” Red says, irritably flicking ash onto the floor at his feet. “So--”

Whatever comes next is lost to the sands of time, because everyone is immediately distracted by the flames that suddenly flare up at Red’s feet. 

Things get a little hectic after that. 

Red clearly stops himself just shy of taking a shortcut and skitters away from the flame and the bed instead, Papyrus grabs Sans by the shirt like he means to drag him backwards by force, and Edge throws an arm between Sans and the flame. It takes Sans an extra few seconds to remember that the lab is fireproofed to within an inch of its life, and another to notice that it’s not the floor itself that caught on fire. It’s a drop of dried black goop left behind when somebody carried Sans to the bed. There must’ve been an ember still burning in the cigarette ash, and now the goop is blazing with all the fierce energy of thermite.

“Red,” Sans says with what feels like an impressive level of calm, seeing as he, Papyrus and Edge are sitting on a bed that was absolutely drenched with highly flammable goop. “Put the cigarette out.”

Red’s one step ahead of him, already dousing the cigarette in the shallow remnants of broth in a disposable ramen cup. Just one more unpleasant smell to add to the chemical reek of the goop burning. They all stare at each other.

“I told you cigarettes are bad for you,” Papyrus tells Red, who wheezes a laugh with a slightly hysterical edge. “Shall we get off the bed now?”

They do so, carefully. Thankfully the fire shows no sign of spreading. It also shows no sign of burning itself out. If the lab wasn’t fireproof and mostly made of metal, they’d be in deep trouble. 

“Glad you didn’t light up ‘til after I showered,” Sans says. “Seeing as I apparently leak accelerant from my faceholes now.”

“No shit,” Red says. “Guess it’ll save us both some cash on lighter fluid, though.”

Red inches closer to the fire, and Edge grabs him by the arm. When Red gives him an unamused look, Edge says, “Don’t press your luck, brother. You probably still have some of that fluid on your boots from last night.”

(Yeah, and thank fuck Red changed into his last spare pair of clothes after the shower. If he’d had the goop on his clothes and they caught fire…)

“I ain’t gonna stand in it, for fuck’s sake,” Red gripes, but he doesn’t pull away from Edge’s grip, just studies the fire from a relatively safe distance. “Gaster was dripping this stuff too, wasn’t he?”

“Sure was,” Sans says. He rubs at one of his sockets. “I think he’s kind of, uh, mostly made of it at this point.”

“Could be useful,” Red says. The lights in his eyes burn as bright and as dangerously as the fire at their feet. “Bet he’s plenty flammable.”

“Everyone is flammable if they try hard and believe in themselves, but I imagine he’s even more flammable than most!” Papyrus agrees. Then he adds pointedly, “But we said we weren’t going to kill him, remember, Cherry?”

“I remember,” Red grumbles.

“We have to set him a _little_ on fire!” Papyrus says. “Medium amounts of fire at the very most!”

Funny. After all the time Gaster put into trying to train Papyrus to become some kind of soldier in a future war against the humans, Papyrus is the only one really invested in keeping Gaster alive for its own sake, and even Papyrus is down with inflicting small to medium amounts of fire in the process. 

The fire finally dies down, leaving only a scorchmark on the metal floor. There’s no trace of the dried goop, like it completely burnt off in the heat.

Huh. Interesting. Maybe the goop makes energy burn more efficiently. Give it an errant ember left in cigarette ash and it’ll turn it into a fire that burns hot and fast until there’s nothing left. Give it a little magic and get enough out of it to keep a parasite alive for six years without killing the host?

That goop was holding the broken pieces of Gaster’s soul together, keeping enough magic ( _Sans’s_ magic) running through it that it didn’t just fall to dust.

Maybe, that is. Another wild guess. Sans doesn’t actually know. Bad scientist, no cookie.

He’s pretty sure Alphys took all the equipment with her when she moved to the surface, but there might be some left in the closed-off section of the lab. He’s no chemist, but Gaster insisted that he and Alphys know enough about each other’s specializations to help each other out. Sans could scrape up a sample of goop and run it through analysis. Honestly, he should’ve thought of that months ago instead of just leaving his goop-stained hoodie with Red and trying to move on with his life. They’re all paying for his ‘out of sight, out of mind’ bullshit now.

“We should call Undyne in to help us,” Edge is saying, clearly in the middle of a conversation Sans spaced out on. “The queen. Frisk too, perhaps.”

“In case we all die, you mean,” Papyrus says. “Smart thinking, Edgy Me! I would greatly prefer not to be dead for keeps! May I suggest Fluffybuns as well?”

“I don’t want that fucker here,” Red says through his teeth.

“He’s very good at fire,” Papyrus says. “And healing, if it comes to that. Speaking of, how much food do you happen to have on you?”

“Not as much as I’d prefer,” Edge says grimly.

The bitter chemical smell of the burnt goop lingers aggressively, making Sans’s head hurt and his eyes water. He takes a page out of Edge’s book and squeezes the top of his nasal aperture, which actually helps to clear his head a little. Eyes squinched shut against any lingering smoke, he says, “I think I stashed some food behind a wall panel upstairs, if you--”

“Sans,” Red says. 

The taut edge to his voice makes Sans’s eyes snap open. He looks down at his hand and sees the black goop on his fingertips where he touched his face. He’s leaking it from the eyes again. He can taste it in the back of his mouth.

The shields are giving out under the strain.

They just ran out of time.

Papyrus grabs onto Sans, like he can keep Gaster from dragging Sans into the void if he just holds on tight enough. He’s scared, and Sans can’t tell him it’s okay because it’s absolutely not. They’re not prepared for this. They don’t even know if their opening gambit will work. They’re absolutely fucked.

“Brother,” Edge starts to say, unquestionably an order, but Red is already on it. With a violent flare of magic, he rips open the door to the void like he’s trying to tear it off its hinges. It hangs open, a tear in the world, a wound. Pure absence spills out, dark yet darker, and then--

A hand drifts out of the void. Just a hand, detached from any wrist or arm. There’s a circle cut out of the center of its palm, like an empty and staring eye. Black fluid patters onto the floor like soft rain as it slowly, cautiously moves forward. 

Papyrus makes a small noise in his throat and forces Sans behind him, his grip like iron. If they survive this, Sans will probably be ashamed of how little he fights. Edge’s hand rests on his shoulder, a silent reassurance that he’s here. He and Red have their back. Like Sans could doubt it.

Finally, Gaster makes his entrance.

The building pressure-pain in Sans’s skull equalizes as Gaster steps through the door. It still hurts ( _fuck_ , does it hurt) but not like he’s about to have another seizure. Any relief is buried under horror as one of Gaster’s feet hits the floor with a wet slap, followed by the second. A black puddle of goop spreads at his feet, reaching its long fingers towards all of them.

Gaster stands in the light again, dripping and reborn. The lights in his eyes fall on Sans like there’s no one else in the world. He smiles, and it is a slow and terrible thing. He takes one deliberate step forward--

And Papyrus punches him in the face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: Sans and Papyrus continue to have bad times in the childhood trauma zone. Red accidentally sets goop on fire and there is a moment where Sans worries that the bed he, Edge and Papyrus are sitting on are next. Body horror. Sans nearly has another seizure. Gaster makes his entrance.
> 
> A slightly spoilery note because I know I always worry about this myself: the Annoying Dog and the cats are absolutely fine. They're chilling at Edge's house, having a much better time than their people are. :D


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> detailed content warnings in endnotes

With a crack of fracturing bone, Gaster goes down. 

He sprawls there on his back on the floor of the lab, clutching one side of his face as goop runs between his fingers. Surprised. Like after six years of being untouchable, he’s forgotten what pain is. 

Red’s the first to move. He yanks out his cigarette lighter and flicks it to life. Before he can drop it, Papyrus grabs him by the wrist and says quickly, “Cherry, wait, his HP--”

 _Is at 1,_ Gaster says, lowering his hand to reveal that Papyrus widened the crack in his socket. His expression settles back into its usual clinical calm. He doesn’t even look at Red, staring up at Papyrus like they’re alone. Like he stared at Sans a minute ago, before Papyrus clocked him. You’d think he’d learn. _Are you going to let them kill me?_

Papyrus doesn’t flinch. His gaze drops to the lighter in Red’s hand, which went out when Papyrus grabbed him. Sans can see it on his face; if Papyrus was anyone but himself, he couldn’t have stopped at one punch.

Sans checks Gaster. For a second, the check data is all glitches and strange dark patches that make his head hurt, like the universe is trying to redact Gaster from its official report. And then--

Paps is right. Gaster’s at 1 HP. Papyrus can throw one hell of a punch, but not enough to take Gaster from his max HP of 666 down to 1. Gaster must’ve already been running low when he crawled out of the void. Maybe dragging Sans into the sideways place and breaking his ribs took it out of him, or maybe feeding off Sans only kept him barely alive to begin with, but he started this fight when he was weak enough that one punch could take him down.

His mistake.

Sans could just kill him right now. Red and Edge and Paps won’t do it, they don’t want to risk it possibly killing Sans, but it would be so much simpler like this. No chance of anybody else getting hurt. Nobody’s even paying attention to him right now. They probably wouldn’t be able to stop him.

He made this problem, didn’t he? He should be the one to solve it, one way or another.

When Sans glances sidelong to check on Edge and Red, Edge is watching him like he can hear every word that just crossed Sans’s mind. Or maybe he just knows Sans and Red so well that he can sense when one of them thinking about doing something stupid. Edge’s eyelights burn like a warning. Sans gives him a shaky grin and looks away.

Meanwhile Gaster is still on the ground, staring fixedly at Papyrus. He says, _I’m asking you for mercy._

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” Red says. His grin is like a bear trap with all the sharp bits covered in poison. “After all the shit you pulled, you want _mercy_?”

Ignoring him, Gaster says, _Give me another chance. That’s what you do, isn’t it, Papyrus? You could hardly live with yourself otherwise._

Papyrus’s jaw tightens hard enough that Sans can hear the bone creak. He takes a deep breath and forces a smile. “We’re going to call Asgore and Undyne now, and I suggest you lay there and not say things while we wait for the Guard.”

“Papyrus,” Edge says. Just that, but the message in it reads loud and clear.

“Yes, I know it’s a trick, Edgy Me!” Papyrus says impatiently. “Obviously it’s a trick! But we can't kill him! So we’ll just have to be trickier than--”

Gaster drives a bone attack into his own chest. 

The feeling carries down the sick connection between them like a call on a telephone wire. There's no pain, not really. Even as the razor point of Gaster’s attack pierces his (their) soul and then slides right through like it’s parting water, it’s too sharp to hurt. Just a pinch and then cold, like an injection. 

Chaos erupts. Sans’s knees fold under him. Papyrus grabs him and hauls him backwards, and Sans’s ribs scream a protest he can barely feel. Red is yelling. Edge is yelling, which is scary as fuck because Edge never yells, and Sans should tell them he’s not dying but he can’t breathe around the spreading wrongness in his chest. It feels like all the warmth is being pulled out of him. He should say something. He should--

And then it’s gone. The cold in his soul. The numbness. All that’s left is an exhaustion that blacks out the corners of his vision and makes it hard to stand.

Blindly, Sans throws out a check. It finds Gaster not dead, not even harmed. Better than unharmed. He tore life out of Sans and swallowed it down like a fucking cinnamon bunny. Now the numbers in his check info are bloated and warped, higher than anything Sans has ever seen before. When Sans lifts his head enough to look at him, he sees Gaster on his feet again, smiling. 

Then he hears the rising whine of a blaster.

There’s no time to think. He just lunges sideways in Papyrus’s arms, grabs Edge and Red, and drags them all into a shortcut. Not fast enough; the searing light of a blaster is the last thing he sees before the darkness of the void wraps around them all. 

It’s the first time Sans has been in the void in months. It embraces him like it's been waiting for him all along. Like it's on his side. It feels different now. Kinder. There’s no sign of Gaster, but Sans isn’t taking chances. He tears through the shortcut like hell is on his heels, fast as he can, and Red’s throwing the full weight of his magic behind it. They’re only in the dark for a split second, fast as blinking, before the void spits them out in the true lab.

Too much. He blacks out for a minute. When he comes back, he's propped like a doll against an examination table. They’re in one of the secret rooms blocked off by the vending machine. There’s six tables spread evenly throughout the room, a sink, a door that leads deeper into the lab. His cracked ribs are throbbing dully. Papyrus is nearby, retching into a trashcan. Abrupt shortcuts are a bitch for the passengers, and not much better for the driver. Violating all the laws of physics can do that to a guy.

Edge kneels on Sans’s other side. He doesn’t look particularly queasy. Probably distracted by the vicious burn covering his left shoulder and most of his left arm. When he sees Sans is conscious again, he sets down the half-eaten packet of dry ramen in his good hand and touches Sans’s cheek. He doesn’t say anything. The look on his face and the slight tremor of his hand say it for him.

Sans checks Edge. Another wave of tiredness hits him, making it hard to focus on the numbers, but he concentrates and sees that Edge’s HP is steadily dropping.

Gaster bound himself to Sans’s soul so tightly that he can use KR.

“Oh god,” Sans says, horrified. He tries to sit up, and Edge gently pushes him back down. Sans grabs his wrist and holds on. He’s afraid to ask, but he does it anyway, panic making his voice sharp and shaky. “Where’s Red?”

A packet of chisps bounces off Sans’s chest; he’s too slow to catch it. Red drops down beside Edge, closer than he normally would. His eyes are a little too wild for him to look convincingly unruffled, but he scrapes up a crooked smirk for Sans’s benefit. “Don’t get your panties in a twist, babe. I’m peachy keen. Just fried the elevator controls and used my blasters to weld the elevator doors shut. Figured it might slow him down. Got the last chisps out of the machine while I was at it.”

“Surprisingly sensible of you,” Edge says. He shifts, his knee bumping against Red’s, and Red doesn’t even snarl at him. “Better to save the few healing items we have.”

“Save ‘em by not getting hit, you dipshit,” Red says. He pulls a roll of bandages out of his inventory and starts unwinding it. His hands are steady as a rock, like this is just another Saturday night for him. “How many times have I told you to guard your left side, huh?”

Edge takes his hand off Sans to give Red the finger. It isn’t exactly comforting that the burn is bad enough that he can’t use his left hand. At least the KR seems to have stopped dropping his HP. Red scowls, but the worry behind it is so blatant it could be seen from space. Then he turns that glare on Sans.

“And you,” Red says. “You just got sucked dry like a fucking juice box, but no, you go and shortcut with three people. You didn’t even know if he could follow us. You wanna get stuck in the void again?”

“Knew you’d get us out if you had to,” Sans says.

That takes the wind out of Red’s sails. He grumbles and starts carefully wrapping the bandage around Edge’s arm with all the care in the world. The ramen helped heal it a little, but it still looks angry and painful as fuck. 

Red says, “You okay over there, Papyrus?”

Papyrus sits up, wiping his mouth on a handkerchief. “Fine, yes. You know I hate it when you do that, brother.”

“Sorry,” Sans says. 

“I suppose it couldn’t be helped. There wasn’t much cover in that part of the lab,” Papyrus sighs. Which makes it sound like Sans made a tactical decision instead of just trying to get as far away from Gaster as he could. “Also, I think I may have cracked a few phalanges?”

“Happens sometimes when you punch bone,” Red says. His grin is wolfish. “It was fucking awesome, though.”

“Thank you, Cherry!” Papyrus says, cheering up a little. “Since you turned off the elevator, maybe he’ll just leave? Or wait quietly downstairs until the Guard gets here? Edgy Me texted Undyne and asked her to bring heavily armed friends. She drives very fast. We might be okay if--”

There’s a loud crash from a couple floors down, followed by a shriek of tortured metal. Papyrus winces. Red exchanges a grim look with Edge and starts bandaging faster. 

Sans holds out the chisps to Papyrus. “Here, bro, you need ‘em more than--”

“You will darn well eat the chisps!” Papyrus snaps. “You’re at 0.5 HP, that’s completely unacceptable!”

Papyrus’s voice cracks. He stops, his eyes suspiciously shiny. Fuck. All Sans does lately is scare the bejeezus out of his people. It must be getting old.

Since Papyrus looks about ready to try to open his chisps for him and feed him like a babybones, cracked phalanges or no, Sans opens it himself and eats a chisp. With his lousy HP, that’s enough to bring him up to full, although it doesn’t do jack or shit to give him stamina back. With his mouth full, he says, “Wow, watch your language around my virgin ears.”

Red snorts but thankfully doesn’t make a crack about how they ought to be careful to preserve the few virgin body parts Sans has left. One corner of Papyrus’s mouth gives a reluctant twitch. When Red gestures for Papyrus’s hand, Papyrus offers it to him and lets Red start wrapping his knuckles. More quietly, Papyrus asks, “Did I hurt you when I punched him in the face?” 

Sans shakes his head. "Didn’t feel a thing till he stabbed his soul.”

There’s a loud metallic bang from the elevator shaft about a floor down. 

“That seems to be the strongest point of connection between you,” Edge says. He finished the ramen and got some HP back, although not as much as Sans would like. He flexes the fingers of his left hand experimentally. They move, but it’s stiff and clumsy. “Every time I healed you, his soul grew stronger.”

“If you hadn’t, I’d be dead,” Sans says. “Cut yourself some slack, edgelord.”

Edge gives him a dour look. “Such sage advice from the man who’d never take it.”

Yeah, but it actually _is_ Sans’s fault they ended up here. At least partly. He knocked over the first domino, and from there, it was just momentum and gravity.

Funny. When it turned out Gaster was feeding on him, he’d wondered if his magic had kept Gaster just barely alive for six years. But no, now it seems like maybe Gaster had been slowly starving to death only to reboot and recover full HP so he could do it all again. And again. And again. Sans would say he wouldn’t wish that on his worst enemy, but considering that it’s Gaster? He’s not that torn up about it.

There’s another crash, even closer this time.

“We could run,” Sans says. If Gaster could’ve dragged him out of the timeline again, he would have the second the shields failed. They could shortcut to the foot of Mt. Ebott and wait for backup. Gaster would follow them, he’s not going to give up now, but they wouldn’t have to fight alone. “We can’t win this. You saw his HP.”

“Yes, but that can’t be his _real_ HP!” Papyrus says. “It wasn’t like that before! That’s too many numbers. Nobody has that many numbers!”

“All it means is that I can hit him a few dozen extra times before I gotta worry I’m gonna kill him,” Red says.

Welp, there’s yet more evidence for Red being out of his fucking mind. Sans looks at Edge, the resident voice of reason, the safety belt on the trainwreck of Red’s utter batshittery. “He’s got KR. He took you down almost a hundred HP in one shot.”

“Which still puts me in a better position than you and my brother,” Edge says. 

So much for reason. Frustrated, Sans says, “This is crazy. If he hits Red--”

“You said yourself that he wants me alive to make a battery,” Red says. “Besides, if he pulls that resurrection trick a couple more times, he’s gonna fucking drain you dry.”

“Which is why he won’t do it,” Sans says. “If I die, he dies.”

“Perhaps, but only Papyrus and I have the control not to accidentally kill him while trying to subdue him,” Edge says. “I doubt he’ll go quietly.”

“I can’t let him hurt anybody else, brother,” Papyrus says. “I can’t let him hurt you anymore.”

“You didn’t let him--” Papyrus’s raised brow is a thousand page novel about all the ways Sans is a hypocrite. Sans sighs and lets his head drop back against the table. “Fuck. Okay. Just had to ask.”

"Again," Red says dryly. “A real good reason to kill Gaster is so we don’t gotta keep having this same conversation.”

Another bang from the elevator shaft. It sounds wrong, like it’s a little too high. Maybe Gaster is trying to find the weakest part of the welds.

Red neatly bites off the end of the bandage and tucks it into the wrap around Papyrus's knuckles. He asks Sans, “Think you can still fight?"

“Didn’t think I could in the first place, but I’ll give it a shot,” Sans says. He looks down at his goopy and highly flammable shirt, then at the dusty jars and beakers that had been abandoned in the secret parts of the lab for six years. "And if I run out of juice, Molotovs. Gimme your lighter, I left mine in your jacket.”

The lighter Red presses into his hand is the same gaudy, unnecessarily edgy piece of shit that Red used to light a cigarette for him in the alley behind Grillby’s a few months ago, back when all this started. For a moment Sans is there again, a traitorous shiver running down his spine as Red drawls, _I can get you off._ And boy howdy, was he right.

Sans didn’t realize at the time that he was taking the first stumbling step that led him here. He didn’t know it’d save him. 

While he’s distracted by having warm fuzzies over the ugliest lighter he’s ever seen, Red leans in to growl in his acoustic meatus, “Don’t pull any martyr bullshit, Sansy. You hear me?”

Apparently Edge wasn’t the only one to notice Sans contemplating homicide. Sans plants a hand on his forehead, pushing him away. “Same goes for--”

Part of the ceiling crashes in on them like the fist of an angry god. Sans barely dodges out of the way of a chunk of cement that’s bigger than he is. It wouldn’t kill him, but it would sure as hell break something. He finds another table, one of three left standing, and hides behind it. 

For a moment, there’s too much dust in the air to see. He can’t tell if anybody’s hurt or worse. And then he hears Red cursing a blue streak, and the painful knot of his soul unwinds just a little.

There’s a battered metal cabinet beneath the room’s single sanitary sink. Its surface provides a warped mirror that lets him Papyrus and Edge crouched behind one of the other tables. They look relatively intact. The relief lets him take his first full breath since the ceiling fell in. 

As the dust starts to settle, Sans finally sees the dark shape of Gaster standing in the center of the rubble. Despite everything, he hesitates.

Red doesn’t.

The first bone attack pierces straight through the center of Gaster’s body, splattering goop across the floor. When Gaster turns, Red’s blaster nearly goes off in his face, which distracts Gaster just long enough for Edge to stab him between the scapula with a nastily barbed attack. Edge twists the knife. 

Gaster wrenches himself forward and off of the attack, but before he can go anywhere, Red turns his soul blue and shoves him back onto its barbed point. Edge doesn’t stagger under Gaster’s weight; he was braced for Red to do exactly that, like they’ve done it a million times before.

The whole fight is eerily silent; they don’t talk much during battles where Edge and Red come from, and they leave no room for anybody else to get a word in. They move like they’re one mind shared between two bodies. It’s beautiful. Poetry in motion, if poetry had a body count.

(Okay, so it’s kind of hot.)

Gaster might have KR and a ridiculously high HP, but he still has to take turns in combat. Edge and Red don’t. If he was anyone else, they’d have carved away a quarter of his HP before he even had time to adapt. 

Finally, Gaster gets his feet under him. Red is right in front of him, radiating fury, six blasters behind him, but Gaster just coldly stares him in the face as he tries to stab an attack backwards and into Edge, who’s still behind him. Edge easily dodges away, ripping the attack out of Gaster again in the process. The goop flows back together, sealing the wound like it was never there.

That’s okay. Sans’ll give him some new ones.

He turns Gaster blue, hurls him at the hole where the ceiling was, and has a lattice of bone attacks waiting for him by the time gravity takes over. Gaster tries to catch himself and slow his descent, but then Papyrus grabs his soul and slams him through the bones and into the ground hard enough to fracture the tiles. Red shoots him while he’s down, but Gaster rolls away from the second blast and is back on his feet. Fuck, he’s fast, his warped body flowing like quicksilver.

So Sans shoves a couple bones out of the ground right under his feet. Gaster doesn’t trip, but it does slow him down for a fraction of a second. Long enough for Edge to send another barbed attack tearing through him. 

There’s sweat running down Sans’s face, stinging in his sockets. He feels like he’s already gone ten rounds. Thinks of sunlight through stained glass. Stupid. No time to get distracted by reset bullshit.

Maybe he should text the kid just in case. _Hey, bud, turns out I might need you to rethink that ‘no resets’ promise you made..._

A flurry of hand constructs surround Edge. They claw and pull at him, trying to go for his throat, digging fingers into his burnt shoulder. Edge seems more annoyed than anything. With a swing of a bone attack, he swats them out of the air and stomps them to dust. But there are more of them, so many more, and it keeps him from attacking as Gaster turns five blasters on Papyrus. If Papyrus wasn’t so quick on his feet--

Sans’s soul lurches in his chest. Not in the metaphorical sense. Like iron fillings stirring in the presence of a magnet. A cold, claustrophobic intent tries to close its goopy fingers around his soul and bring it out, like Red does, and its magic is so much like Sans’s that his unwilling soul starts to obey. But after that first terrifying second, it stops. There’s something holding it in place.

The collar around his wrist is so hot it burns.

Across the room, Gaster grits his teeth in effort. One of the blasters crumbles to dust as he loses concentration. His grip tightens down until it’s suffocating. Sans shudders and grabs helplessly at his chest like he can try to pry those unseen fingers off him.

And then it’s gone, because it’s probably hard to do creepy soul bullshit when Red shoves a bone attack into your cervical spine.

Red has good aim. He made the attack long and thin and sharp, the better to slide between two of Gaster’s vertebra. As Gaster staggers, Red twists the attack. There’s a wet cracking sound. The last four blasters crumble, and Gaster falls to one knee. 

For a moment, Sans actually thinks it’s going to be that easy.

And then Gaster’s expression goes blank. He turns his head to look at Sans like there isn’t an attack in his spine, cartilage popping. Black goop runs down his spine. Red’s eyes widen.

Gaster seizes Edge by the soul and throws him backwards. It might have been fine if Edge hit the wall. But his back slams into the edge of a table, and Sans hears something break. Several somethings. Edge’s eyelights gutter out. He starts to slide to the floor like his legs won’t hold him.

In the time it takes for Red to yank the attack out of Gaster, the flock of hand constructs clamp down on whatever parts of Edge they can reach, even as he kicks or flings them away, and they slam him against the corner of the table again. That time Edge grunts, a pained noise. Sans’s marrow runs cold.

Before Gaster can do it a third time, Red is there, ripping Gaster’s hands off Edge and throwing them into the snarling, gnashing maw of one of his blasters. But they just keep coming, more and more of them, and now they’re grasping at Red’s clothes as Red shakes them off.

Sans thinks of how that goop burned.

As Papyrus starts desperately firing a fuckton of blasters at Gaster, one after the other, Sans forms an attack and cuts the sticky collar off his (Red’s) t-shirt. Then he grabs a discarded beaker off a shelf, crams the fabric in it, and lights it. The fire burns so hot and furious he almost drops the beaker. 

He whips it at Gaster’s chest and doesn’t miss. The glass shatters, and Gaster goes up like a torch.

Gaster is silent as he burns. The goop screams. 

It’s like the world is coming apart. Sans’s skull threatens to crack open at the sheer volume of it. He claps his hands over his acoustic meatus like that’ll help, but the sound is coming from inside him. No one else seems to hear it. Sans feels the heat building in his marrow as the fire gets closer to Gaster’s soul, uncomfortable and then painful, this is what it feels like to burn alive, and oh fuck, he doesn’t know if he can take this, it _hurts_ \--

Gaster’s whole body lurches forward, a liquid motion. His face and arms disappear into a squirming mass of black fluid. Almost too fast to see, the goop ripples and flows, the bulk of Gaster’s body shedding the layer of goop that’s on fire like a lizard shedding skin, isolating it to one small section of itself. Then a hand construct wielding an attack amputates the flaming goop from the whole, leaving it to burn out.

Panting in a desperate attempt to cycle cooler air through his ribcage, Sans watches helplessly as the goop roils. An arm juts out, clad in a long black coat. And then Red’s blasters circle Gaster’s prone body. They fire like strobes, one after the other, devouring Gaster’s HP. 

Sans checks Gaster, the HP tanking even as he reads: _Gaster. 66666 ATK. 66666 DEF. 530,298 HP. You made him do this._

The check info glitches again. It reads: _He’ll kill them all._

Another glitch. Now it says: _You know how to stop this, Sans._

Papyrus is kneeling beside Sans, holding him by the shoulders. Sans can barely hear his voice over the ringing in his skull. He looks for Edge and Red, finds Edge on his feet but clearly struggling to stay that way. The back of his t-shirt is clinging wetly to his ribs and spine, and he’s hunched a little, guarding the center of his body. At least one of his bones broke badly enough to leak marrow. The impact didn’t snap his spine, thank fuck, but he’s down to 198 HP. 

There’s empty wrappers at his feet, the remains of a couple utilitarian food bars. Sans tries to remember how many HP they restore, to figure out how fucking close Edge came to death. Too close. Anything would be too close.

Hilariously, Edge looks worried about _him_. His mouth moves and Sans hears him talking, but damned if he can parse the actual words. 

Belatedly, he realizes that he’s still clutching the lighter in a death grip, the metal ridges of its leering skulls digging bruises into his metacarpals. He almost drops it, too freaked out by the memory of burning. Turns out there’s a pain so bad that even _he_ has the sense to be terrified of it. 

Edge is waiting for some kind of answer from him, so he gives Edge a thumbs up and a weak grin. Edge looks less than reassured. Bummer.

Meanwhile Red looks like death, but not his own. His eyes are black pits in his skull. He’s sweating through his shirt, shaking with the effort, but the barrage of blasters just doesn’t stop. There’s an opportunity for free damage and he’s damned well gonna take it. Sans would be right there with him if Red left enough room to fit a single blaster more.

With a sweep of his arm, Gaster carves through Red’s blasters and they fall to dust. Red jerks, head snapping back as the feedback hits him; it doesn’t ding his HP but Sans knows from bitter experience that one of your blasters dusting hurts like hell. 

But Red pushes through it, summoning more blasters to surround Edge. Sans adds some of his own. They kinda look like overgrown puppies compared to Red’s rabid wolves, but they still inflict damage just fine.

Gaster rises to his feet, a hand construct idly brushing dust off his shoulder even as he hurls an arc of bones at Edge. Edge dodges, but it’s a lot slower than before. One of Red’s blasters darts in front of Edge, takes the hit and shatters. Edge gives him a Look; Red gives him the finger. Before Gaster can try again, Papyrus is bludgeoning the hell out of him with a hurricane of blunt bone attacks.

Papyrus is starting to sweat. Edge looks hollow-eyed with pain, like it’s costing him to stay upright, and every time he has to dodge, that pain in his expression winches even tighter. But Gaster fights like he can do this forever, like the massive amounts of damage they’re doing to him doesn’t even matter. He’s implacable as entropy. 

They summon blasters; he destroys them. They impale and beat him with attacks; the goop reforms. They scorch him and throw him into walls; he keeps coming. And he won’t back off Edge, circling like a scavenger and chipping away at Edge’s HP, making Edge burn through healing item after healing item. Every time Gaster scores a hit, he looks at Sans. 

Minutes pass in a blur of searing blaster fire, a rain of bones, gravity being violated up down and sideways. Edge looks like he’s struggling not to pass out. Red’s blasters are manifesting more and more slowly. Papyrus is out of breath. Every attack Sans throws feels like it was torn out of him. He’s pushing himself harder than he ever has, fighting like an animal in a trap. Still, he watches helplessly as Edge’s HP falls. 150. 100. 50. 20. 10.

Where the fuck is Undyne?

All at once, Gaster throws himself at Edge so fast Sans can barely see the attack in his hand. Edge tries to roll out of the way. Stumbles. Goes down.

A blur of motion. The brief scent of void. Red flings himself out of the shortcut and on top of Edge, a 5 HP shield between him and the attack Gaster swings down on them like the arc of a scythe. He’s already trying to shortcut again, to get out of the way and drag Edge with him, but he’s not going to be fast enough. He knew it from the start or he wouldn’t have put himself between the two of them. He means to take the hit.

The attack dies in Gaster’s hand before it ever makes contact. When Gaster hits Red, it’s just with the back of his hand. Sans only has a split second to watch the blow snap Red’s head to the side before Red and Edge are gone. He gives Papyrus a desperate look, and Papyrus gestures for him to go find them.

The void spit them out behind one of the examination tables. Blasters roar as Papyrus lays down cover. Edge is already struggling to drag himself upright, trying to cradle Red’s face in his hands, sheer panic in his voice. He sounds so young. “Brother? Are you--”

“S’okay,” Red says. His hands come up to loosely grasp Edge’s wrists. “Didn’t hit me that hard.”

When Edge carefully wipes away goop to look at Red’s cheekbone, the red blotch that’s gonna be one motherfucker of a bruise says otherwise. Sans checks Red. Finds him at 3 HP, by some fucking miracle, and he can actually breathe again. 

Sans demands, “What happened to no martyr bullshit?”

“Exactly,” Edge says. There’s a crash from the other side of the room. “We will discuss this later, brother. At length.”

“So long as you’re alive to bitch at me,” Red says. “We outta food?”

Edge’s grimace answers that question. He sinks back to the ground, looking beaten and exhausted. Half-dead. A lot more than half-dead, numbers wise. “I’m fine. I just need a moment.”

“I stashed some food in the room with the VCR,” Sans tells Red. “Right corner, lowest panel--”

Before he even finishes his sentence, Red’s gone. With a trembling hand, Sans wipes away some blood and goop splattered on Edge’s cheek. Edge gives him an almost-smile that breaks his heart. 

(If Sans hadn’t eaten that sandwich earlier, Edge would have it when he needs it. This is so fucking _stupid_.)

Then there’s the sound of bone cracking, and Papyrus yelps in pain. Sans sticks his head out from cover to check on him. Finds Papyrus on his feet and clutching his right ulna. Gaster keeps after Papyrus, who’s dodging more than he’s attacking. Sans feels like his soul is tearing in half. Edge and Paps both need him; he doesn’t know what to do.

“Stay!” Papyrus tells him, as stern as if he was talking to the dog. He narrowly ducks out of the way of a blast. “I’m fine! Really!”

Ha. How’s that for a universal constant.

With a pop of displaced air, Red’s back. Empty-handed. Grimly, he shakes his head, and Sans curses. Edge doesn’t; he just lays on the floor, looking resigned. Then he wearily starts to push himself back to his feet.

“Hey, no, no,” Sans says, alarmed. He can’t find a part of Edge’s body that isn’t injured, and he finally settles on turning Edge’s soul blue and easing him back to the floor. “You can’t.”

“Sans,” Edge says, so terribly gentle for all that his voice is a pained rasp. He glances past Sans to lock eyes with Red, and they share a look that says a thousand words in a language Sans barely speaks. He’s talking more to Red than Sans when he says, “It’s all right.”

Red closes his eyes tight for a moment. If Sans didn’t know better, he’d say Red was praying. When Red opens them again, Sans sees the bleak amusement of somebody who never really expected to die of old age anyway. Red says, “Maybe. Ain’t time for a last stand yet, though.”

“Much longer and I won’t be _able_ to stand,” Edge says. His eyes come to rest on Red’s collar. They won’t quite focus. He looks ashen, his bones dull and sweaty. “This is my job.”

“What, to die like an idiot?” Red rubs his knuckles over Edge’s skull with rough affection. “You’ll get your chance, prob’ly, but not yet. Not till I give the word. You can’t even see straight.”

“I’m fine,” Edge repeats, but not with much conviction. He lays his head back on the ground, his eyes closing. “I just need to...”

When the words trail off, Red shakes Edge’s unburnt shoulder. “Hey, no. Wakey-wakey, sunshine.” 

No response. 

Red’s eyelights shrink. He gives Edge another shake, harder, and Edge’s head just lolls. His eyelids aren’t fully closed, and they flutter like Edge is trying to respond to his brother’s voice, but there’s only darkness inside. Red snarls, “Open your fucking eyes, Papyrus!” 

Nothing.

“Shit,” Red whispers, looking at Sans. They share a moment of pure helpless panic. Red drags a trembling hand over his face. “ _Fuck_. Okay. Keep an eye on him, sweetheart. I got this."

Red starts to get up. Sans yanks him back down and asks, “You got the juice left to get us all out of here?”

“I can get us as far as the judgement hall, maybe,” Red says. “It’ll buy us a little time, but I’ll be fucking useless afterwards. We ain’t gonna find any food there. Dunno where the hell Undyne is. No point.”

No, there isn’t. There’d been boxes in the judgment hall, but they were taken to the surface with everything else. The underground is empty.

So Sans does what he always should have done. The decision he should have made in the resets. The one he can live with, however long he has. He tells Red, “Get them out of here.”

Red doesn’t look surprised. Whatever cold equations he did in his head when he found that there was no food, no last minute rescue, he factored in Sans’s bullshit attempts at heroism. “We don’t got time for this.”

It takes everything in Sans not to shake him. Red doesn’t have the HP to spare. “I can hold Gaster off for a little while. Hell, if it’s one on one, I can just take my turn in combat and do nothing. I’ll stall until Undyne comes.”

“For fuck’s sake, you’re barely standing,” Red says. “You’ll pass out without him having to do a goddamn thing. Don’t be stupid.”

Sans glances at Edge, motionless on the floor, barely breathing. His soul twists. Ruthlessly, he takes the low blow. “If it’s me or Edge--”

“Don’t,” Red says. One word, spoken so sharply that anybody with sense would get out of stabbing range.

“This is an easy call, Red!” Sans says, frustrated. Edge is everything. The person Red loves most in the world. His brother. He can't believe Red even hesitates. “Why won't you--”

Another crack of splintering bone. The sound Papyrus makes then, strangled and hurt, will haunt Sans‘s nightmares if he survives long enough to have them. He shoots to his feet, and Red moves with him. Papyrus is on the ground, his left femur bent in a way that it was never meant to. The only thing keeping his leg attached to his body is a loose band of magic.

There’s a ping of Red’s soul turning blue. A split-second warning, not enough time to dodge; Gaster hurls Red against the wall on the far side of the room with a sickening crack. Red hits the floor in a crumpled heap and doesn’t move.

Time slows like a nightmare. Papyrus cries out and struggles to get up on his broken leg, to stop Gaster as he bears down on Red, but he can’t get there any faster than Sans. Gaster doesn’t even slow as he dusts the blasters Papyrus throws in his way. Edge’s eyes aren’t open, but there’s magic fizzling weakly in his fingers like he knows Red needs him and he's trying to answer despite everything. Red just lies there, somehow not dead at one fucking HP, but he’s stunned, he must’ve hit his head.

And then Gaster’s on him, grabbing a fistful of Red’s shirt, pulling him off the ground. Red realizes what’s happening, panic rising as he sluggishly tries to fight Gaster off with kicks and half-formed bone attacks. Red’s collar sparks and burns. Hand constructs grab him by the wrists and legs, slowing him down, trying to hold him still as Gaster implacably reaches beneath his ribs--

And Sans does the only thing he can think of. He calls Red’s soul like Red calls his, throwing all his desperation and fear behind it, and something answers him. A soul darts across the room and hovers above his hand, not quite touching. 

But it isn’t Red’s. 

Cold goop rains on his fingers, splatters his shirt and legs and the floor beneath him. Gaster’s soul reeks like something three days dead. It’s Sans’s magic that keeps it beating. It knows him. It’s _his_ more than it’s Gaster’s, and it stays with him. Even as he pulls out his lighter, ignites it and holds the flame close enough to the dripping surface of it that he feels the echo of that heat like a sunburn, the soul doesn’t move.

Slowly, Gaster turns his head. Red isn’t struggling anymore; there’s blood running down one side of his face from what looks like a hairline fracture in his skull, half-blinding him, but the hazy eyelight Sans can see out of is fixed on him instead of Gaster. Red’s fingers curl into a fist, magic seething in his hand.

 _Not yet,_ Sans thinks at him, willing himself to suddenly develop short-range telepathy. _Let me get him off you first, Red, for fuck’s sake._

Red’s mouth twists into a snarl, but he can read Sans’s expression. He waits. There’s blood on his teeth.

Sans can feel Gaster tugging at the soul with increasing force, trying to reclaim it, but it doesn’t move. It’s not funny, especially considering that Sans doesn’t know how much butane is in this lighter, but he has to bite back a laugh anyway. 

“Oh, how the turns table,” Sans says. “How ‘bout you put him down before things get heated?”

Gaster doesn’t. His hand constructs move around him like perverse butterflies, signing, _You wouldn’t die for your own brother. You won’t do it now._

“Things change,” Sans says. “Not you, though. You’re still an asshole.”

Gaster scoffs. _I’m not the human child, to be frightened by your empty threats._

“Aw, doc, it’s like you don’t know me at all,” Sans says. “You really think I won’t kill us both just to fuck you over? It’s only pain.”

Gaster stiffens. He still has a hold of Red, but his focus is completely on Sans. Good.

Sans’s hand is steady. The lighter hovers ever-so-close to Gaster’s soul. The goop is starting to steam. The look that slowly dawns in Gaster’s eyes now is one Sans has never seen before. 

Gaster is worried.

It’s about goddamn time.

“Brother,” Papyrus says, a tremor in his voice like he can’t tell if Sans is bluffing. Which is fair, because right now Sans isn’t sure either. But when he glances for a fraction of a second at Papyrus, the look in his eyes is achingly familiar: Paps will back his play, but he sincerely hopes Sans knows what the hell he’s doing.

Too bad Sans really doesn’t.

Slowly, deliberately, Gaster lets go of Red’s shirt. His eyes are on Sans; he seems to be working something out in his head. He doesn’t see the attack in Red’s hand or the way Papyrus is trying so hard to calculate the best angle to hit Gaster from without risking Red. 

_You actually care for him,_ Gaster says. His eyes glitter with clinical fascination. _Interesting._

When Gaster summons an attack, Sans sees in his eyes that it’s not a threat. Gaster means to kill. To punish Sans for resisting even if it means sacrificing a pawn. He doesn’t aim for Papyrus. He doesn’t aim for Edge. He aims for Red.

He’s fast. Sans is faster.

As soon as the flame touches it, Gaster’s soul goes up like it’s soaked in kerosene.

The pain is--

The pain is. 

It’s a purifying flame, casting its own judgement, killing Gaster and taking Sans with him because they’re too tangled together to unwind. The goop shrieks and shrieks inside his head, but even over that hellish noise, he thinks he hears Papyrus screaming. He tries to claw his way back to his brother, but it’s like trying to hold onto the edge of a cliff as it crumbles away beneath his hands. 

The shrieking abruptly goes dead. All at once the weight dragging him under is gone. But he is already so far down, and he is so fucking tired, and he could rest, he could finally just--

Hands close around his faltering soul. Raw magic jolts through him like lightning, chaotic and furious and alive. 

And then he’s on the floor, staring up at Red’s face. 

Red is kneeling over him. There’s blood running freely down his face, dripping on the soul clutched in his hands. Sans’s soul, burning brighter than it has in years. Red is in his head, a clamor of wild emotion, filling the empty places where Sans’s life poured out of him to try to fill Gaster’s fractured cup. Red must’ve shoved most of the magic he had left into Sans’s soul to keep Gaster from draining him dry. Magic and something more vital. Red looks half-dead, and Sans feels a quarter alive.

Anime bullshit.

“Hey,” Red says, trying to sound calm but radiating enough fear to give the population of a major city panic attacks. Sans can feel how bad Red's head and back hurt from when Gaster threw him into the wall. How blackout exhausted he is. “You with me, sweetheart?”

Sans swallows against his dry mouth. Coughs. The ozone taste in his mouth has been replaced by something more bitter. Like ashes. Seems like all the goop burned away. His voice is a husk. “That sucked.”

Red laughs, sounding a little wild. A wave of relief and anger ( _what the fuck were you even thinking, why did you, why_ ) breaks over Sans. Red thinks loud. It’s so fucking much. 

There’s a sound nearby. Cradling Sans’s soul to his chest like a newborn kitten, Red turns his head to look at something. His emotions shift like watercolors bleeding together, shading towards a purer, deeper fury. 

Fuck, _Gaster_. The soul slipped out of Sans’s hand when he fell. (And possibly Fell.) Sans tries to sit up, looking wildly around for his brother, and finds the soul on the floor beside him. What’s left of it, anyway.

The goop holding Gaster's soul together has burnt away. It lays in pieces like some grotesque puzzle, each part struggling to beat to its own rhythm. None of them are in time with the pulse hammering in Sans’s skull. As he watches, they crumble at the edges like sand blowing away in a wind he can’t see.

And there’s Papyrus, leaning heavily against a table to keep himself upright. Three of his attacks are jutting out of Gaster’s back, pinning him to the floor. Not that it matters. The goop that covered Gaster burnt away like the rest, and judging by the uneven shape of his body beneath his long black coat, there’s not much left of him. Not much at all.

Gaster is staring at Sans, fear and loathing in his flat black eyes. This would be the time for a last quip, a smartass line, but Sans realizes he has nothing to say. He’s done giving Gaster anything; not his life, not his anger, not his fear. Not even his words. He won’t waste his fucking breath. Gaster isn’t worth it.

That must show on his face, because Gaster’s expression shifts into a more familiar contempt. Seeing that he’s finally wrung every bit of use out of Sans that he can, Gaster turns back to Papyrus. His hand constructs are as warped and eroded as the rest of him as he signs, _Help me._

Papyrus hobbles a step closer and sits down beside Edge with a grunt. Edge is still breathing, thank fuck, even if it’s shallow. His eyes are half-open but unlit. Hard to tell what he’s actually aware of, if anything. 

With a glance to check that Sans hasn’t wandered off to set himself on fire again, Papyrus lays his hand on Edge’s chest and starts healing, a green trickle of magic. Edge’s HP rises steadily, slowly. All Papyrus’s anger seems to be gone. He just looks tired and a little sad as he tells Gaster, “I tried to, doctor. Repeatedly.”

 _Dying,_ Gaster says. His hands struggle to form the word.

“Dead,” Papyrus corrects him, not unkindly. “I understand now. You died when you fell into the Core. You stole six more years from my brother. You already had your chance to live, but you wasted it on torturing children and neglecting to build safety rails. Perhaps you should have tried another hobby?”

Gaster looks at him with utter incomprehension. He starts to sign something, and then he has nothing to sign with. And then he has nothing to see with. And then he has nothing at all. He dies in the ruin of his own lab, with no fanfare and no glory. Quietly. Unremarkably. Unmourned.

Papyrus wipes his face with the back of his unbandaged hand, leaving wet streaks of cement dust across his cheekbone. He sniffs. Then, very calmly and very precisely, he says, “Fuck that guy.”

Surprise pierces through Sans’s numb vaporlock. He wheezes a laugh. It hurts (not just his ribs; he’s sore down to his frigging marrow) but it’s nothing compared to almost burning to death, so whatever. The pain means he’s still alive. They all are. 

“Did I use that right?” Papyrus asks fretfully.

“Perfect,” Sans says, still snickering. He may be a little punchy.

Red climbs off him, moving like a very old man. Still holding Sans’s soul with one hand, he picks up the lighter off the ground. The flame it makes is anemic as hell, but it still works. Slowly, painfully, Red makes his way over to the pile of dust that was Gaster and tries to light it on fire. 

Turns out that dust isn’t particularly flammable. Also that firing a blaster three times into a dust pile reduces it to nothing but a scorchmark on the ground. Afterwards, he seems grudgingly satisfied. At Papyrus’s raised brow, Red says, “Just checking.”

Then he sits back down, perfectly positioned between Edge and Sans. He rests a hand on Edge’s brow like he’s a kid with a fever. Edge makes an interrogative noise in his throat, like he’s trying to stir. He only manages to move a little before pain scrunches his expression tight.

“Don’t worry ‘bout it, Paps,” Red murmurs, his thumb absently tracing the line of Edge’s coronal suture. “We’re okay.”

Edge closes his eyes.

“For the record, I would appreciate you never setting yourself on fire again,” Papyrus tells Sans, politely averting his eyes from Red having a moment. “That was horrifying, if surprisingly effective.”

“Sorry,” Sans says. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Ha. Put that on his epitaph.

“It very wasn’t!” Papyrus says. His attention drifts over to Red. “But I suppose we all do dumb things to save the people we lo--”

Abruptly, Red asks, “How’s the boss doing?”

“Oh, he’ll be fine!” Papyrus says with slightly strained cheer. “We’re very durable, us Papyrii. Once he sees a d--” Papyrus falters for a fraction of a second. “-- healer, they’ll fix him up in a jiffy. Possibly two jiffies. No more than four.”

Red closes his eyes for a second. His desperate relief is strong enough to leave Sans blinking back the tears Red won’t cry. He can feel the ache in Red’s throat, the pain in his skull, the way his hands are trembling as he finally lets the full weight of his fear hit him. He’d been scared shitless. Thought he was going to lose Edge and Sans both. That he’d lose everything.

Finally, Red seems to realize that he’s still holding Sans’s soul. A razor’s edge of guilt drags along the connection between them, fraying it, because

( _Red touched Sans’s soul and bled all over him even though Sans had never wanted that before, wouldn’t have wanted it now if Red had been able to ask him, but damned if Red didn’t do it anyway to keep him breathing_ )

Wow. Apparently Red doesn’t have a mental volume setting that won’t rattle the windows.

When Red starts to put his soul back, Sans makes a sound of wordless protest. Red stops, staring down at him. Sans is way too fried at the moment to handle this moment with the finesse it deserves, but he sloppily tries to shove warm fluffy feelings at Red. Gratitude, relief, fondness deep enough to drown in, so deep it’s almost...

Red’s eyes widen, startled. Vulnerable. Then he averts them. The hard line of his mouth softens a little. Too quietly for Papyrus to hear, Red says, “Dumbass.”

Guilty as charged. Sans gives him a crooked grin. “You c’n put it back now.”

Red lets Sans feel how much he doesn’t want to let go. How much Red wants to look it over at his leisure like a crow with a newly stolen shiny thing. To explore it with his fingertips, every last scar and sweet curve of it, until it was bright as a star and dripping slick, until--

And then the bastard pushes it back into place. Now Sans can’t even loudly feel exasperated at him.

Turns out that without the distraction of Red blasting emotions at him like an ex-lover holding a boombox over his head, Sans has to deal with how very unhappy his body is about the whole ‘almost dying in horrible agony’ thing. The searing pain is gone, leaving him just dully aching all over, but he feels hollowed out. It’s not _bad_ , exactly. It’s like he scoured out all of Gaster’s poison, but it took a lot of painful and unpleasant work and now he desperately needs to sleep while his system reboots.

Red looks about as wrecked as Sans feels, but he sets his jaw and stays upright. Probably won’t let himself rest until he knows Edge is okay; Sans wouldn’t if it was his brother unconscious on the ground. The least Sans can do is stay awake and wait with him.

Suddenly, there’s a loud thud-shriek of metal being stabbed and twisted, and an even louder, very familiar voice crying, “All right, you creepy bastard, I’m here to punch you back out of existence! Where the hell are you?”

“Hello, Undyne!” Papyrus says. “We’re here! Just follow the trail of carnage and destruction!”

A second later, Undyne clears the doorway at a sprint. She’s bristling with spears, her teeth bared, ready to stab the fuck out of someone. To her credit, she only looks disappointed for a split second when she realizes Gaster is already dead. Mostly because she simultaneously realizes that Edge is on the ground. 

The color drains from her face; she must’ve checked him. With a curse, she tosses her spear aside and baseball slides across the floor to get to his side. She immediately plants a hand on Edge’s chest and starts healing, magic burning so bright and fierce that it’s like trying to look at a welding torch. 

Even unconscious, Edge grunts in pain, his expression tightening. Red grits his teeth, looking like he wants to both demand Undyne heal faster and to shove her away from his brother.

“What the hell happened?” Undyne demands. Her gaze darts over Papyrus, clocking his injuries. She curses and grabs his shoulder with her other hand to start pushing healing into him too.

“That’s not really necessary!” Papyrus says, wincing a little. “Edgy Me needs help much more than me. I’m only mildly maimed!”

“I brought some healers with me, they’ll be here in a minute, so shut up,” Undyne says. Her attention turns to Red and Sans; her check is like getting patted down for injuries by somebody who’s trying to be gentle but is more used to bench-pressing cars. Red gives a warning growl, which she ignores. Her eye widens. “Holy shit, Sans, your HP!”

Before Sans can ask what the fuck that means, he gets hit with two more checks. Papyrus’s, familiar as a slightly-too-tight hug, and Red’s, which is a little like getting shaken down for lunch money. Now Red is staring at him like he’s sprouted wings and is offering rides to neighbor kids. Papyrus squeaks out a noise and claps a hand over his own mouth, his eyes wide and shiny. They don’t look like unhappy tears, but--

Sans checks himself. His HP is at 1.05. As he watches, it trundles stubbornly up to 1.06 like a drunk turtle trying to make it uphill.

The truth sinks in, reaching him where the surreal sight of Gaster’s dust couldn’t. It’s finally over. They’re free.

“Oh,” Sans says. “Nifty.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: graphic violence and description of injuries including broken bones and burns; weird soul shit means that Sans feels it when Gaster gets burnt; Gaster stabs his own soul; vomit; emotional abuse from Gaster; more self-sacrificial bullshit than you can shake a stick at; Gaster tries to nonconsensually touch Red's soul; body horror; Sans sets Gaster's soul on fire; Red grabs Sans's soul to keep him alive; Gaster dies and almost takes Sans with him.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> detailed content warnings in the endnotes

Red’s never been in a hospital before.

Back in his universe, everybody’s injuries were either handled at home or in the spare room of a healer, if you could afford one. (One way or another.) If you needed more help than that to survive, it was time for the dumb bastards who loved you to figure out where to scatter your dust.

But here they’ve got clean, quiet places with healers and meds and fancy machines. Unlike the human hospitals on TV, the monsters try to make things look non-threatening by painting the walls soft shades of blue and green, hanging up art in the rooms, offering comfy furniture (like the recliner Red’s slouched in, right beside the bed) for the family while they wait for their person to recover or die. There’s a fucking piano in the lobby for some reason. Red can’t even see any old bloodstains on the sheets that Edge is currently passed out on. 

He hasn’t woken up yet. Just briefly stirred a couple times to mutter and try to struggle to his feet until Red snarled at him to knock it off, which made him settle down. The healers gave Red serious side-eye, but Edge would be a billion times more freaked out and probably assume they were in a hostage situation if Red was all soft. Fuck what some soft bastards think about it.

It’s not surprising Edge is still out, between almost dying and the painkillers and pure tranquilizing intent the healers poured into him to keep him from thrashing around on the ambulance ride and fucking up the two fractured vertebrae in his spine even worse. Let him rest, the healers said. Completely normal.

Funny how they didn’t mention that Edge had been going into shock when he passed out. Maybe they thought Red wouldn’t know shock when he saw it. Maybe they thought he’d find that ignorance comforting, like a little kid pulling the blankets over their head at night so the human in their closet can’t see them.

These people. Idiots, all of them. Even if some of them are _his_ idiots now.

It’s been quiet in this room for a while, ever since they took Papyrus across the hall to get casts put on his broken bones. Somebody made sure that both their doors stayed open so they could all keep an eye on each other. Red thinks it might’ve been the fishbitch, who’s standing over the healer’s shoulder and eyeing every single move they make as they wind the plaster wrap around Papyrus’s ulna. She looks so goddamn much like the Undyne he knew, save the metal arm and some of the scars. Out of everybody in this universe, she’s the closest to being exactly the same as the person back home. Red keeps that in mind whenever it seems like a good idea to trust her.

She was the one who helped get Edge down the mountain to the ambulance, her carrying one end of the gurney and RG 01 the other so the bumpy path didn’t jar Edge’s spine. Edge recognized her voice, mumbled her name, called her captain, but it wasn’t this Undyne that he wanted. She knew it, too, judging by the way she winced a little before she gruffly told him everything was fine.

Maybe she feels Red staring at her, because she glances in his direction. He sees her consider bristling; she doesn’t like Red much. Thinks he’s an asshole to his brother for no real reason. But after a moment, she just gives him a stern nod like they’re two guards passing on the street. Points at his brow, silently asking if he’ll let her fix the hairline crack yet. When he gives her the finger, because his head is already pounding and he doesn’t need to jar it by shaking it around, she shrugs and goes back to watching Papyrus’s healer to make sure they’re doing their job right. 

Huh. Guess Red is temporarily off her shitlist.

The steady rhythm of Edge’s breathing hitches. Red looks at him, soul stupidly lurching from hope to disappointment when he finds Edge’s eyes still closed. The painkillers the medics gave him are just starting to wear off, that’s all. He’s gonna be in a world of hurt when he wakes up.

Edge’s hand lays pale and still on the sheets. The call button is right beside it, left within Edge’s reach like he’s actually awake to use it. Red jabs the button, then hesitates before sitting back.

He glances at Sans, curled up small and quiet in a chair by the door, staring across into the hallway like he’s afraid he’ll lose Papyrus if he blinks. He looks… well, pretty much like he almost died a couple hours ago.

(For Red. Can’t forget that little detail. He almost died for _Red_.)

Nobody’s looking. Red rests his hand on Edge’s for a moment, gives it an awkward pat, and sinks back into the recliner. (On top of the dizzy pain blaring like a fire alarm in Red’s skull, his shoulders and back hurt like a motherfucker whenever anything touches them; must’ve bruised when Gaster hurled him into a wall, although Red hasn’t had a spare moment to assess the damage.) When he looks over at Sans again, Sans is still watching Papyrus, but his grin is just a little wider.

“Asshole,” Red says, breaking the silence the way it oughta be broken. He can’t say for sure Sans actually saw anything, but he usually deserves to be called an asshole for something or other. Like setting himself on fucking _fire_ , for instance.

Sans shrugs in a philosophical sort of way. Or at least as much as he can shrug with his ribs still cracked. Easy enough for the healers to fix, but like hell is Sans letting any of them touch him. Red saw the look on his face when Papyrus suggested (reluctantly) that maybe a healer oughta check to be sure all the goop is out of his system and that Sans didn’t permanently damage himself with that stunt he pulled.

(If Red had been just a second slower--)

“Somebody’s coming to dose the boss with painkillers again,” Red says. Feels like he oughta give fair warning. “Pretty sure there’ll be needles and shit.”

“Uh-huh,” Sans says, so neutral it’s hard to tell if he’s even listening. But one finger taps restlessly on the arm of his chair, and considering how fucking exhausted Sans must be, that unnecessary motion says a lot.

Honestly, Red didn’t expect Sans to even make it through the front door. When the healers said Edge and Papyrus needed to come here, Sans looked like he would’ve grabbed them both and bolted if he had any gas left in the tank to shortcut. And then he saw that Paps was shit-scared but determined to go if only to prove to himself that he could, he saw that Edge was so fucking hurt, and Sans went eerily quiet and just dealt with it without a single fucking complaint.

“You don’t gotta stay, y’know,” Red says.

Sans flicks a sidelong glance at him. “Is that right.”

Comes out more like _izzat right_ , because he’s so tired his Hotland accent is slipping back in. He could waste energy on hiding it, but it’s Red so he doesn’t bother. It’s like catching a stolen glimpse of the collar poking out of the sleeve of his coat. A little bit of Sans unguarded.

“Paps is gonna be done in a minute,” Red says. “You guys c’n go home. No reason for all of us to sit here doing jack shit.”

Sans looks at him. Which doesn’t sound like much, but the sheer intensity of it is like he’s peeling off Red’s armor and looking at his wounds, drawing the soul from his chest and examining it up close. Fair enough. Turnabout is fair play, after all. Not that they know much about playing fair.

Finally, Sans says, “Nah. I’m not leaving.”

Maybe it’s that Sans is too exhausted to overthink everything and he’s on some hippie in-the-now shit. Maybe it’s the peace of mind that knowing Gaster is finally dead. Hell, maybe it’s just that he came so close to death that the grim reaper slipped him the tongue. But even though he looks like shit, even though they’re in a fucking hospital, to Red’s frayed senses he seems like the only steady point in all this chaos spinning around them. May the Angel help the dumb bastard who tries to move him.

(The inside of Sans’s head was so quiet. Like the surface of an underground lake, all cool and still and tempting. Only when you went in did you realize how deep it went and how dark it was. Not a tame thing, but wild.)

Never let it be said that Red isn’t a dumb bastard. 

“Seriously, I got this,” Red says.

“I’m not leaving,” Sans repeats, a little louder, like clearly the problem is just that Red didn’t hear him.

What a pain in the ass. God, Red wants him. Needs to drag him onto his lap, kiss him, and then shake him until he spits out what the hell he thought he was doing. If it was for Edge or Papyrus, Red could understand. But Sans knows who Red is. _What_ Red is. He knows Red’s not worth dying for.

He knows and he tried to do it anyway.

Red looks away. Edge’s face all shadowed with pain isn’t a much better view, but at least Edge isn’t watching him like he can read every thought that crosses Red’s mind. “Fine. Whatever. If you freak out and shank a doctor, I ain’t covering for you.”

Sans laughs, a low scrape of sound, like he’s trying not to hurt his ribs. “Yeah, you will.”

Yeah, Red will.

Someone clears their throat. Red snaps to attention and finds a nurse standing there, their long floppy ears bound in a loose knot on the top of their head. They’re wearing scrubs with little delta runes on them and a tag reading ‘Ana, she/her’.

“Hi, hon,” she says. “Didja need something?”

It takes Red a couple seconds to register that she’s talking to him. Most people don’t have the sheer fucking nerve to throw a casual petname at him. “Uh, hey. Pretty sure my bro needs another dose of pain meds. You c’n check his chart and shit if--”

“Already checked it while you two were talking about stabbin’ me,” Ana says cheerfully. She directs a smile at Sans as she goes to a drawer on the wall. “Hi there, Sansy, haven’t seen you around in a while.”

“Eh, you know me. Been real busy keeping up with my nap schedule,” Sans says. He’s smiling back, but his eyelights are cold. If Ana had any sense, if she was seeing anyone but good old harmless Sansy instead of a guy who set someone’s fucking soul on fire a couple hours ago, she’d back slowly out of the room. “What’d I miss?”

It’s a deflection so blatant you could see it from space, but Ana accepts it easily enough. Just chatters amiably about engagements and graduations, and oh, so-and-so wants to move away to the other coast to go to college with humans, and can you believe this business with the old Royal Scientist, everybody up and remembering him all at once? People have been talking about it all night. Crazy, right?

“Yeah,” Sans says wearily. “Crazy.”

All the while she preps a syringe with practiced hands, filling it from a vial of clear liquid she pulled out of a drawer. Sans can’t seem to look away as she draws the plunger back. He’s not even breathing.

Red weighs how little he likes the idea of letting Sans out of his sight versus the potential mess if Sans flips out and stabs a nurse. Finally, grudgingly, he settles on the plan with less collateral damage. 

“Hey, asshole,” Red says, abruptly cutting her off. It jerks Sans’s attention away from the syringe. “Get me something from the vending machine. I’m starving.”

Sans gives him the same unimpressed stare the stray did the first time Edge shooed her off the kitchen counter, the _surely you’re not talking to **me** in that tone of voice_ look. But he seems to know that no good would come of him sticking around while Edge gets stuck. The vending machine isn’t so far that he couldn’t hear Red if he yelled and be back in a heartbeat. (Or that Red couldn’t hear and find him, barring void bullshit.) So Sans gets up, careful and slow, like an old man who got beaten up at the bus stop by hooligans. 

Fuck. Sans’s rambling metaphors are contagious.

“Hey, Paps, I’m gonna hit the vending machines,” Sans calls across the hall to his brother. “Want anything?”

“For you to have better culinary standards, brother!” Papyrus calls back.

“Sorry, they’re outta that,” Sans says. He gives Red a tired wink. “Jujubees, right?”

Bastard knows Red hates Jujubees. They get stuck in his teeth. Red deadpans, “Surprise me.”

Sans gives him fingerguns and disappears through the doorway. Red can hear Sans’s sneakers shuffling down the hall.

“Guess he doesn’t do well with needles?” Ana asks wryly.

“Most people don’t, far as I can figure,” Red says, because like hell is he just giving up one of Sans’s vulnerabilities even if it’s embarrassingly obvious.

As she rips open an alcohol wipe and reaches for Edge’s good arm, it occurs to Red that it might be a good idea to keep Edge from lashing out the second that the needle sinks in. Red gripping his arm just above and below his humerus makes Edge twitch, almost struggling all the way to the surface. Red murmurs, “Easy, boss. It’s just the fishbitch. Let her work, huh?”

Ana is watching him, waiting for the okay to actually touch Edge. Smart.

Edge is still tense. Doesn’t believe it, probably. Which is fair, considering that this place is full of weird smells and sounds that are miles away from Undyne’s dingy, dusty bedroom or their own equally dusty living room.

Welp. Fuck. This is gonna call for extreme and extremely embarrassing measures.

Avoiding Ana’s eyes, Red leans in close to Edge. It’s easier than he would have thought to reach back to the bad old days, hiding in alleys with a much younger Edge. Before everything went wrong. When Red could still let himself be the brother Edge deserves. 

His voice is nothing to write home about. Wasn’t even when they were kids, and sure isn’t now, after 20 years of cigarettes and cheap booze. He can barely remember the words of the first song that comes to mind. But he sings, hopefully too quiet to be heard, “I see a bad moon rising, I see trouble on the way…”

Kind of a shitty lullaby for a kid, but Red didn’t know any better. Hey, it worked then, and it works now. The iron tension in Edge’s body eases. Guess he figures that if Red’s okay enough to butcher songs he heard drifting out of tenement windows and shitty bars, then Edge doesn’t need to fight.

Still singing awkwardly, Red glances at Ana. She’s trying not to smile. He’s gonna pretend not to notice so he doesn’t have to shove a coat hanger through his own eyesocket when they get home. It’s okay if _Sans_ sees, or maybe even Papyrus, but other people? Red’s put in a lot of goddamn work to keep his reputation as an irredeemable bastard, museum trips and minions aside.

He glares at her, pointing at the magic binding Edge’s ulna and radius to his humerus. She swipes the alcohol across a little patch of magic. There’s a bad moment when the needle sinks in, a hissed breath through Edge’s teeth and a prickle of familiar intent in the air, but Red grips Edge’s arm tighter and sings a little louder and nobody gets shanked.

Almost as soon as the needle withdraws, the rising tension in Edge goes slack. He breathes deeper, easier.The LV beating angrily in Red’s marrow quiets a little.

Thank fuck that’s over and Red can stop making an ass of himself with this singing crap. He lets Edge go, settling back into the recliner. There are darkening bracelets of bruises around both Red’s wrists, which are hard to miss, but for the first time, he’s aware of a matching ache in his femurs. Gaster’s grasping hands must’ve left marks there too. Red fought, but they’d held on tight and his limbs hadn’t been cooperating right after he hit his head, and all he could do is _watch_ as Gaster tried to--

Red shudders. Can’t help it. The memory is a bruise he can’t see. He’s not gonna be sleeping easy for a while.

(Yeah. Well. Maybe he gets now why Sans didn’t tell them about those nightmares where Gaster touched his soul. But Red sure ain’t gonna admit it.)

“You all right?” Ana asks, eyeing him like she thinks he’s freaking out about what just happened and not about the voidy motherfucker who tried to fondle his soul. “Looks like you hit your head awful hard.”

Wouldn’t be the first time. Probably won’t be the last. Red’s not a squishy creature; there’s nothing meaty in his skull to bruise and so he can’t get concussed. But the flow of magic in his skull gets cranky about being sloshed around, which means he gets a bitch of a headache and some mild vertigo. Nothing that’ll kill him, just inconvenient and distracting as hell.

“Don’t you worry about me. I’m peachy,” Red says. As Ana tugs Edge’s shirt up to check the gently glowing bandage wrapped around his spine that’s constantly pressing low-level healing into him to help the fractures knit together, Red waves vaguely at the hospital room around them. “So how much is it gonna cost for all this?” 

A pretty penny, more than likely. They’re not gonna expect him to work it off in trade, thankfully; he doesn’t even wanna think about what a healer like Gil would’ve wanted for this back home. Him and the boss probably have enough gold in the bank. If not, maybe they’ll let him work something out. A loan or whatever.

For a moment, Ana just looks at him with blank incomprehension. Then, as she realizes what he means, it turns to pity. “Oh no, honey, it’s all paid for.”

“By who?” Red demands. For fuck’s sake, if Sans went behind his back and offered to pay--

“Taxes, by and large,” Asgore says from the doorway. 

Sheer fucking panic jolts through Red. He throws a protective cage of bones around the bed, recklessly burning through what little he has left in the tank even as his headache viciously spikes, but the cage is wobbly and some of the bones are already crumbling. A few seconds later he remembers where he is, that the tyrant is dead, and fear turns to rage in a heartbeat.

(Mostly at himself. That’s two people that came close enough to dust Edge. Red’s at 40-some hours of no sleep and counting, and that fight with Gaster would have exhausted him on a good day, but Edge can’t take watch while he recharges. Red has to be better than this.)

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Red snarls, dropping the cage before it falls apart. 

Asgore doesn’t flinch. Just gives Red that same infuriatingly sad look he usually does, and then turns to Ana with a kindly smile. “Please excuse us for a moment.”

Ana glances back and forth between them. To Red’s surprise, she doesn’t jump to follow King Daddy’s orders, just asks Red, “You need anything else, darlin’?”

Then again, maybe he shouldn’t be surprised. He’s heard monsters call Asgore ‘Fluffybuns’ like he’s as harmless as he pretends to be, all golly-gosh and Santa outfits. Asgore doesn’t seem real worried about open insubordination.

Lucky for Red. He's given Asgore reasons to punish him a dozen times over.

He offers her a crooked grin. “If you see Sansy in the hall, tell him I want a coffee from the vending machine too.”

Sans can’t dodge Asgore forever, he’s still the fucking judge, but Red can spare him that right now. Sans has already dealt with enough bullshit as it is the last couple days. He might be all zen about the hospital thing, but there’s no reason to push him until he snaps.

Not in the un-fun way, anyway.

“Will do,” Ana says. She narrows her eyes at Asgore, a stern warning look that hilariously reminds Red of Edge. Meekly, Asgore steps out of her way to let her leave, and she breezes out like she’s the goddamn queen of the hospital wing. 

Once she’s gone, Asgore touches the door like he thinks about closing it. The look on Red’s face must give him other ideas, because he leaves it open. He’s in a coat, but beneath it he’s wearing some kind of pajama pants and house slippers. He looks old and tired and vaguely pitiful, which just makes Red hate him more.

Asgore looks at Edge, and his frown deepens with paternal concern. Red wishes monsters needed bedpans so he could wing one at Asgore’s fucking face. “How is he doing?”

“What d’you want?” Red says flatly.

With a sigh, Asgore finally accepts that this ain't gonna be a friendly chat. “I went to the Lab. What remains of it.”

“You here to complain about damages?” Red asks. “Put it on my fucking tab.”

“I’m here about Doctor Gaster,” Asgore says. “I’d like to know what happened tonight, if you have a moment to spare.”

“Seems like you weren’t real interested in keeping track of what your pet scientist was doing when he was alive,” Red says. “Why start now?”

Asgore flinches. Interesting. Before Red can twist the knife, Asgore says, “Because two of my people are in the hospital.”

“Oh, _your_ people,” Red says bitterly.

“A man is dead,” Asgore says, more sharply than before. 

Like he can’t even bear to use Gaster’s name more than once. Red feels his grin widen. “You want an official judgment? He deserved what he got.”

He’s expecting some kind of squeamish protest. Asgore just stares fixedly at the foot of Edge’s bed as he says, “When they were looking through the hidden section of the lab, the Dogi found evidence of certain… activities that I wasn’t aware of. Enough to have brought him before a judge, if he had survived. So yes, I’ll take your judgement into account.” 

There’s an angry glint in those mismatched eyes that says even though Asgore probably would’ve insisted on their merciful bullshit about not executing anyone, what he would have _really_ wanted was Gaster on the end of his trident. Possibly on fire like a roasted marshmallow. Whatever the Dogi found, it pissed Asgore off.

Amazing. Red and Asgore can agree on something after all.

Red shrugs. “He tried to kill us. We killed him first. What else is there to know?”

“What a delightfully uncomplicated view of the universe you have, Cherry!” Papyrus says from the doorway. He’s in a wheelchair with his broken leg propped up and one arm in a sling. There’s an edge to his smile as he adds, “Hello, your kingliness!”

“Howdy, Papyrus,” Asgore says. “How are you doing?”

“Well, aside from the broken bones, my brother nearly dying and the horrible sights I relive every time my eyes close, I can’t complain!” Papyrus says.

Asgore winces. “Ah.”

Undyne drifts back into sight, pacing with a cellphone clutched to her ear. She’s got that look that means she’s talking Alphys down from an anxiety ledge. Unsurprising. Red doubts this Alphys has much happier memories of Gaster than his would.

“Speaking of horrible sights and reliving things, I thought I heard you asking Cherry about what happened tonight?” Papyrus says. “But I’m sure I must have been mistaken, on account of Edgy Me’s injuries. Why, I doubt anyone with a single ounce of sensitivity would bother his brother right now!”

“Er,” Asgore says, slightly more alarmed.

Ruthlessly, Papyrus continues, smiling the whole way. “On the other hand, I am immune to being bothered! After years of dealing with my brother, who is a professional botherer! While I wait for these casts to dry a little, I will be happy to tell you things. Many things. Things that you should have known to begin with, one might say.”

Asgore’s shoulders hunch like Papyrus punched him in the gut. “Yes. I hear there is a nice garden in the center of the hospital.”

“Oh, of course! We should discuss the unethical medical experimentation done in your name in a more discreet location!” Papyrus says, making no effort to drop his voice. If anything, he gets a little louder. “Excellent thinking, Mr. Dreemurr!”

Welp. That decides it. Red’s got two little brothers now.

Which is probably why the thought of Papyrus wandering off with Asgore is like chewing on tinfoil. It must show on Red’s face, because Papyrus gives him that particular _I appreciate your concern but I am a responsible adult so knock it the fuck off_ expression Edge wore almost constantly from ages 13 to 19. Must be a Papyrus thing, how they can say an entire paragraph with the slight arch of one brow.

Red knows what that look means. He’s not gonna win any argument that they have at the moment. Besides, it seems like Papyrus has some stuff to get off his chest. Probably at top volume.

“Text me every 15 minutes or I’m coming after you,” Red says. Unlike him and Sans, he doubts he’s gonna find them in a shower with Asgore’s fingers on Papyrus’s pelvis, and aw _fuck_ , now that’s a thing he needs to unthink before he commits regicide on sheer fucking principle.

Papyrus flaps a hand at him. “Yes, yes, fine. Tell my brother not to worry.”

“Good luck with that,” Red says.

Papyrus snorts a laugh, and then coughs into his fist. “Ahem. As I was saying! The garden would be lovely, your fluffiness.”

Before Asgore can stoop down to push his chair, there’s a ping and the wheelchair handles turn blue. Papyrus sails out of view, pushing his own damn self. Asgore stares after him, looking bemused, takes a last wounded glance at Edge, and then follows.

What an asshole.

Now that there’s no distractions, Red settles in to stare at the doorway and everyone who passes by. It’s a suspiciously short period of time before Sans strolls through the door, a cup of vending machine coffee in one hand. Almost like he was lurking around a corner until Asgore was gone. 

“Here.” Sans tosses Red an enormous pack of those candy-coated peanut butter things. The ones that are Red’s favorites. He didn’t know Sans knew that. “They were out of Jujubees. Guess you just gotta settle for second best.” 

Red tears the pack open with his teeth and pours some straight into his mouth. He’s fucking starving. Edge would bitch about him eating like a rabid wolverine, but Sans just snerks and looks a little pleased that Red enthusiastically accepted his food. For a guy who wasn’t born into their culture, he picks up on it fast.

Sans shuffles over to the bed and looks down at Edge, a crease between his brows. Tentatively, like he’s not sure he’s allowed, he touches the back of Edge’s hand, fingertips smoothing over his knuckles. The tenderness in that gesture is hard to look at, so Red doesn’t.

“He’ll be fine,” Red says.

“Yep.” Sans takes a significant swig of coffee and gives it to Red half-empty. Red makes a disgusted noise and drains it anyway. Sans eyes him. “You look like shit.”

“So do you,” Red says. He crumples the cup and tosses it into a trashcan. “Paps is with Asgore, telling him what went down.”

Suddenly Sans looks like he wishes he’d kept the coffee for himself and added a couple of shots of tomato vodka. “How much trouble are we in?”

“Not much,” Red says. “Gaster left evidence of what he did to you and Paps. Guess he didn’t have a chance to clean up after himself before he fell in the Core.”

Sans grimaces. Red figured he might. What Gaster did to them is an open wound, and Sans tried to keep it hidden as long as he could. And now the Guard is involved. Questions are being asked. Papyrus is off telling the king everything. Must be hard.

“Better than being up on murder charges, I guess,” Sans says finally. He scrubs a tired hand over his face. “Maybe you oughta let somebody look at your skull.”

“Maybe you oughta let somebody look at your everything,” Red counters.

“Volunteering?” Sans asks.

"Yeah, sure, I got plenty of available storage closets and some bad ideas," Red says. 

The sad thing is that if Sans calls his bluff, Red’ll just fold. Can't leave Edge like this, not even for the chance to drag Sans close and bite a new mark into his collarbone like he promised. To spread his legs for Sans and clutch at his shoulders and sweat out the excess of stupid fucking _feelings_ that he doesn’t want or even know what to do with.

“Nah,” Sans says, soft, like he knows. “Not here.”

“Right,” Red says. “Wouldn’t want people to find out.”

He doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. He doesn’t actually care about these people or what they know. It’s none of their goddamn business, him and Sans, him and the boss. Him in general. It’s not like Sans has been trying real hard to hide what they’re doing, even if he isn’t shouting it from the rooftops. He let Red manhandle him in that park across from the embassy and half the alleys in town. He said he was thinking about Red fingerfucking him in the middle of goddamn Grillby’s. Red’s seen what it’s like when Sans is actively trying to keep something a secret, and this ain’t it.

No, he’s stirring shit just to stir shit, because he needs to do something with this seething frustration in his marrow, and if he can’t fuck it out of his system and he can’t kill anyone, then being a bastard for no reason will do just fine.

Sans doesn’t take the bait. He huffs a laugh, although damned if Red can tell why. Then, moving slow because of caution or his ribs or both, he braces a hand on the back of the recliner and leans down to bring their mouths together. Red has plenty of time to tell him no. He doesn’t.

Sans tastes like menthol and bad coffee, not void or blood or ashes. Dizzily, Red thinks there must’ve been one of those mini mouthwashes in the vending machine. Sans kisses Red like they have all the time in the world. Like they’re not in a shitty hospital room with the door open, like Edge isn’t sleeping beside them, like Sans isn’t afraid of people knowing about them. Whatever they are. Red puts a hand on his shoulder. For a fraction of a second, he might have the sense to push him away. Before it’s too late.

It’s already too late.

He drags Sans closer, twisting the shirt in his fingers, a desperate grip. His kiss is a demand. A plea. _Stay._

He’s probably hurting Sans, those cracked ribs, but Sans isn’t complaining. Just murmurs something against his mouth that Red can’t hear at first over the frantic hammering of his own pulse, then kisses him some more.

Much as Red hates to interrupt Sans’s languid exploration of the inside of his mouth, whatever he missed might be important. Red pulls back, wincing as his body protests, and asks, “What?”

His voice shakes. Weird.

“I said I’m not sure I can get out of this position,” Sans says. “My spine locked up. Hope you had an exit strategy, ‘cause I don’t.”

That isn’t what he said, the number of syllables is all wrong, but Red’s got the feeling Sans isn’t gonna repeat it no matter how many times Red asks. He clears his throat and tries to grin. “Little late to think of an exit strategy now, ain’t it?”

(It’s never too late to think of an exit strategy. They both know that.)

“Sure seems like it,” Sans says. His eyelights are soft. “So, uh. Now what?”

Good question.

Painfully, Red shifts over in the recliner and pats the sizable empty spot beside him. This recliner was built for a boss monster. Even with all their cushion for the pushin', both of them can fit without hurting themselves. He says, “C’mere.”

Sans doesn’t deflect or ask if he’s sure, considering the state of Red’s back and Sans’s ribs. He just goes, moving all halting and rusty like his hinges need to be oiled until he sinks into the seat beside him with a nearly inaudible sigh of relief. 

“Now we wait for the boss to quit nappin’,” Red says. “Then we go home. Then you fuck me over the arm of the couch.”

Sans gives a thoughtful little hum. “I c’n do that.”

They sit together in companionable silence. Turns out Red can rest easier if Sans is watching the door too. If anybody tries to come for Edge, he doesn’t doubt what Sans would do to protect him. To protect them both. Weird as that is.

Red lets his hand inch over to Sans’s side of the seat until the back of his knuckles brush the collar. It feels weaker, but the steady pulse of Edge’s magic coaxes Red’s shoulders down from around his acoustic meatus. 

Finally, Red asks, “Why?”

For a moment, he thinks Sans is gonna pretend not to know what he’s asking. Maybe the only answer he’ll ever get is that tender mess of emotions Sans unceremoniously dropped in his lap when Red was touching his soul. It’ll be Red’s job to untangle it, if he’s not too much of a coward.

Then Sans flips the script and reaches for _Red’s_ wrist, curling his fingers around the space just above where the bruises start. His eyelights are cold and distant stars as he examines the marks Gaster left behind, but he’s gentle as he holds Red still to thoroughly look him over. Gentler than Red lets anybody else be.

“Why didn’t you leave?” Sans says, not looking at him.

“... Heh.” Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer. Red grins crookedly at him. “You owe me 20g.”

Sans snorts and lets go of Red’s arm. “Doublecheck your accounting, starshine. You owe _me_ 5g for the tip on that sushi takeout.” 

The utter, stupid normalness of them slinging bullshit makes the fist clenched around Red’s soul ease up a little. He can breathe. “I’ll pay it when you actually buy weed for once, you cheapskate bastard.”

“All I’ve ever procured is lousy skunk weed. If you wanna smoke that, be my guest,” Sans says. 

“Pass.” At the moment, the thought of smoke or fire makes Red want to puke. He can still remember the smell of Gaster’s soul burning beneath the acid reek of scorched goop. He rubs at his aching eyes. Laughs a little. “Fuck, I’m tired.”

“I’ll bet,” Sans says. “You could nap.”

From the tone of his voice, he’s offering even though he’s pretty sure Red will refuse. After all, Sans can’t fight; why would Red trust him to keep watch?

Except Red knows now that Sans staunchly maintaining he’s no good in a fight is total fucking bullshit; Red saw how much HP he carved off Gaster in seconds by fighting smart and dirty. Which doesn’t mean much when they’re both utterly tapped out of magic and Red can’t even manage a decent bone cage. If it comes down to a fight, they’re probably fucked no matter who’s on watch. At least if Red sleeps, he’ll get a little magic back.

“Yeah, okay,” Red says. He takes out his phone and holds it out. “Wake me up in twenty minutes. In ten, if your bro doesn’t text by then.”

Sans turns to him, caught off-guard, but Red’s already leaning his head back and closing his eyes. His headache actually eases a little. The darkness is a comfort. So is the (relative) warmth of Sans’s body. Maybe he’ll warm up more, now that Gaster’s dead, and his hands and feet won’t be so freaking cold. It was great in the summer, but if Sans is gonna be staying over, Red isn’t looking forward to those icy fingers warming themselves on his tailbone at 4 AM. 

Okay, so maybe he is. Just a little. So fucking what.

After a moment, Red's phone is taken gently out of his hand. Another moment, and he hears a tentative purr. Knowing Sans, he’s doing it deliberately. It’s meant to comfort him, or Edge, or both. To lull him to sleep. It’s not like Red needs much lulling at this point, but it’s like Red said: his sweetheart fights dirty. 

Red tries to purr back. Doesn’t manage it. He’s already asleep.

***

Time passes in flashes of darkness and light. Edge claws his way to the surface only to go under again, catching a blurry snapshot of awareness each time. Red demanding that he wake the fuck up. The crack of bone. The reek of something burning. Screaming. A black shape on the ground, crumbling to dust. Being carried like a child. The smell of bleach. Red’s rough voice, singing.

He has to get up. He knows this, even if he doesn’t know why. They need him. He needs them.

Sleep breaks all at once, like a fever. Edge moves recklessly, trying to get up before his eyes are even open, and the burst of sheer agony in his spine drops him. For a moment he’s unstuck in time, a teenager again and badly burnt, and he has to stop his brother from letting that healer hurt him--

A hand on Edge’s shoulder pins him flat before he can push past the pain and try to rise again. Edge squints past the too-bright lights and finds Red there. The bruise on his cheekbone is dark, and there are traces of blood and ash on his face. There’s a bandage taped on his brow.

“Take it easy, boss,” Red says. “You got kinda banged up. It’s always the damn spine with you, ain’t it?”

Another thought occurs to Edge, and only Red’s hand keeps him in place as the panic hits him. He tries to grab for his brother’s hand, but his dominant hand won’t cooperate because that arm is bound tight and stiff in moist bandages. Frantically, he demands, “Where’s Sans? Is he--”

“Right here, edgelord,” Sans says, appearing at Red’s elbow. The sight of him is like a cup of cool water overturned on the fire of Edge’s panic, quenching it in an instant. Sans looks drawn and utterly exhausted but still intact. His grin is genuine. “Before you ask, Paps is fine. He was getting a little stir-crazy. He just went home to check on the dog and feed your cats. Everything’s okay.”

Edge turns his attention to Red. “Gaster?”

“Dead,” Red says with vicious satisfaction.

“Very dead,” Sans agrees. “Red set the dust on fire and everything.”

Red shrugs. The movement is stilted and awkward, reminding Edge of Red the morning after a flogging. He must’ve taken a hit to the back or shoulders as well as striking his head. Faint memory tries to stir, but the clinging black tar of unconsciousness won’t let Edge pull it free quite yet.

“How’re you feeling?” Sans asks, a thread of anxiety in his voice. More than a thread of guilt.

Edge is feeling scorched and broken, unnervingly foggy-headed with drugs, and also like his soul is going to hammer out of his chest with leftover adrenaline. He squeezes Sans’s hand and lies, knowing full well that Sans will know but be reassured by Edge caring enough to make the attempt. “I’m fine. Where are we?”

“Hospital,” Red says. With his free hand, he pokes the button on a little widget just beside Edge’s hand. Calling a healer, Edge presumes. “The monster kind. It’s pretty swank. Got a piano in the lobby. Shame you missed it, the fishbitch was tickling the ivories a while ago ‘til the staff kicked her out for waking half the joint.”

As Red pulls his hand back, something catches Edge’s eye. He reaches for Red’s arm with the appropriate hand, this time, and gently pulls it back into view. Red doesn’t resist.

Bruises around his wrists. Edge can see the shape of cruelly grasping fingers. Red fought against that unforgiving grip as hard as he could.

Edge remembers. 

Red was only on the other side of the room, but it might as well have been miles. Edge clung to consciousness, watching through faltering eyes as Gaster pulled at Red’s shirt. He saw the panic in Red’s eyes, he felt its echo in his own soul, but his magic was a weak and useless thing. He couldn’t stop it. He couldn’t do anything.

“Brother,” Edge says in a choked whisper.

“Hey,” Red says. It’s almost gentle for Red, in his own rough way. He covers Edge’s hand with his. “Nothing happened, boss. He tried, but he didn’t touch it.”

Trying is bad enough. There’s a haunted look in Red’s eyes that makes Edge want to gather Gaster’s dust and spit in it, grind it beneath his heel, _something_. Bitterly, he wishes he’d seen Gaster die. Perhaps in time, when he’s had time to recover, Red might let him touch his soul and share that memory. That would be--

Wait. No. Edge remembers that as well, if hazily. He struggled to focus his eyes, to stay conscious through the pain, but he had seen the dark shape of Gaster puddled on the floor. Smaller now, warped and twisted and diminished, crumbling to dust with agonizing slowness. Not agonizing enough, for what he’d done, but it would serve.

The question is what happened in the time he lost, between one memory and another.

There’s a more important question to be asked first. 

“You’re all right?” Edge demands, searching his brother’s expression. The check reveals that Red is at full HP, at least, just banged up and badly shaken. Edge turns to Sans. “You’re both all right?”

“Well, I’m not in a hospital bed, so I’m one up on you, buddy,” Sans says fondly.

But Sans _is_ in a hospital. Despite his understandable wariness of doctors, he stayed until Edge woke. Edge never would have asked that of him; it’s an unexpected, priceless gift.

“I’ll live,” Red says. He hitches a thumb at Sans, an amused glint in his eyes. “Ain’t you gonna check Sansy?”

“Why?” Edge asks sharply, alarmed, even as he checks Sans and finds-- 

2 HP.

“Oh,” Edge says. Too stunned for anything else. Joy comes slower than fear or surprise, but stronger. He allows himself a smile, just this once. “I see.”

Sans’s grin is almost shy. “Heh. Yeah. Started going up after Gaster died. It’s not much, but--”

“It’s wonderful,” Edge says. 

Sans ducks his head, grinning wider.

“He might not even be done yet,” Red says, looking deeply pleased by the idea. He looks at Sans. “It stopped at 2, but give it a couple days now that you don’t got somebody feeding on you.”

“Yeah, I’m aiming for 5.1,” Sans says. “Maybe 5.2. After all, two decimal points makes all the difference.”

“Fuck off,” Red says fondly.

“How _did_ you kill Gaster?” Edge asks.

Silence drops on the room like Doomfanger from the branch of a tree onto the heads of the unwary. Sans’s grin is suddenly strained, and he immediately finds a corner of the room too fascinating to look away from. Meanwhile, Red’s grin goes sharp.

“Yeah, Sansy,” Red says. He could almost sound amused, if Edge wasn’t intimately familiar with that particular tone from all the times Red thought he’d taken a suicidal risk and was about to give him absolute hell for it. “How ‘bout you tell the boss how you killed Gaster?”

“I don’t think that call button is working,” Sans mutters. 

“Sans,” Edge says, earning himself a fleeting moment of eye contact. “What did you do?”

Sans hesitates.

“Okay, _I’ll_ tell him,” Red says. He looks at Edge. “He yanked Gaster’s soul out of his chest and set it on fire.”

“What,” Edge says flatly.

“It worked,” Sans says. “Burnt the goop that was holding his soul together, which broke the bond. It made sense.”

“Sure. It almost dragged you down with him, but other than that, it worked great,” Red says.

Sans doesn’t attempt to defend himself, even though there is a fairly obvious defense at hand. Gaster had been about to grab Red’s soul when Edge passed out. Perhaps Sans had been afraid Gaster would do even worse. Sans had been gambling with his fucking life, not just the risk of dying but of dying _horribly_ , and Edge can’t say he wouldn’t do the same in Sans’s place. He wouldn’t even hesitate. 

Considering that he was trying to get up and continue fighting when he passed out, knowing that he’d die if he got hit again, he supposes he has little room to talk about self-sacrificial bullshit. Much as he wants to. Very loudly.

Edge exhales, wincing a little as his bruises protest. Tightly, he says, “I’m glad you’re all right. Please never do that again.”

“Heh. That’s what Paps said. I’m not planning on it,” Sans says. A little shudder runs through him at the memory. Even with his fucked up relationship to pain, sharing the agony of burning to death seems to have shaken him. “Not my idea of a good time.”

Red’s anger yields a little. He takes Sans’s wrist and rubs his thumb over the collar’s buckle, making a point of touching them both at the same time as he says with grudging admiration, “You set his _soul_ on fire. That was the most vicious thing I’ve seen in my fucking life.”

“Agreed,” Edge says. Perhaps it says something unfortunate about his tastes that he finds that ruthless streak of Sans’s terribly attractive, but he doesn’t care. 

Sans winces. “Yeah, listen, I know souls are a thing for you guys, so I dunno if that was crossing a line or--”

Red snorts. “Seeing as he was the one fucking around with your soul your whole life, let’s just call that karma. Besides, it’s not like you poked around inside his head.”

Another shudder, this one of disgust. Fervently, Sans says, “Fuck no. I don’t want to know what was going on in his skull.” A pause, and then Sans gives Red what can only be classified as a Look. Edge is so proud. “Wait. Are you still hung up on that? You saved my fucking life, dude, it’s fine.”

“Hung up on what?” Edge asks. 

There’s a staccato knock on the door, and a healer walks in. Red yanks his hands back from both of them like he’s been burnt, stuffing both of them in his pockets and turning away. 

“Look who’s awake!” says the healer, looking genuinely pleased. Ana, according to her nametag. “How’re you feeling, hon?”

“I’d like to leave,” Edge says. He’s just going to ignore the unnecessary and patronizing endearment.

“Yeah, not many people enjoy hanging around here,” she says with a smile that promises nothing. “Let’s see how you’re coming along.”

She comes to the other side of the bed. The closer she gets to Edge, the more Sans tenses up. Before he can snap, Edge touches his hand. Sans twitches to attention, giving him a wide-eyed look, and then twines their fingers together and holds on painfully tight.

He doesn’t let go as Ana carefully undoes the moist wrappings around Edge’s other arm and chest/shoulder to check the burns. Nor when she lifts Edge’s shirt and checks his spine, explaining the cunning little bandage helping the fractures in his vertebrae knit together. 

Red leans against the wall, arms crossed, and watches her every move through narrowed eyes. At one point, when the pain of unwrapping his spine is bad enough that Edge hisses a breath through his teeth, Red growls at her. This doesn’t seem to bother her. She’s a very polite and confident torturer.

Edge nods a great deal to show that he’s listening and keeps quiet, his teeth clenched against any sound, because letting on that it hurts even with painkillers will only upset Sans and Red and extend his stay.

Finally, when all his bandages have been carefully and painfully redone, Ana says, “Well, I’ll be honest. It’s not gonna do you any harm to leave, but you probably oughta stay another day just to be sure. But you’re not gonna listen, are you?”

“No,” Edge says bluntly.

“Right,” she sighs. “You seem like an independent fella.” 

Red snorts.

Ana continues, “So I’ll get you a couple different meds to take home, a few of those bandages for your spine when the intent on that one runs out, and we’ll set you up to have a healer check up on you at home for a couple days. That sound reasonable to you?”

It sounds unnecessary and expensive, but Asgore has gently reminded Edge a few times about the fact that healing is paid for by the kingdom. (He was probably hinting that Edge might need to see some kind of therapist.) In any case, if this is free, there’s no reason to take stupid risks. Not when it involves his spine.

“Yes,” Edge says, swallowing his pride bite by painful bite. “Thank you.”

“Great,” Ana says. “So lemme just get that started, and then you can go home.” 

Edge looks at Sans, clutching his hand for dear life, and Red, who looks dead on his feet but ready to shank anyone who makes a wrong move towards him even if he has to appropriate a scalpel. It’s been a very long few days. They all need rest. They’ve earned it.

Gently, Edge squeezes Sans’s hand. “Yes. Home would be lovely.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: this is a recovery chapter in a hospital setting, which means it deals with aftermath of injuries and the use of needles and painkillers; a mention of Red fucking people to pay for Edge's healing in the past; Sans's medical abuse trauma rears its head a few times; and there are flashbacks to Gaster trying to grab Red's soul without consent and to Gaster's death by fire.
> 
> If you want to skip the bit with needles, stop reading at the paragraph starting with "As she rips open an alcohol wipe" and restart at the paragraph starting with "Thank fuck that's over."
> 
> Between Red's POV and Edge's, Paps and Undyne totally teamed up to bully Red into letting her heal and bandage that crack in his skull. Red didn't even bite her. It's a miracle.
> 
> Just to clarify, this is the end of this PART of the story, not of the series, because I did not get this far to blueball Edge. XD


	8. epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> detailed content warnings in the endnotes

It turns out that the sign in New Home was right: Asgore is an excellent listener. 

Papyrus should have taken him up on that offer years ago. He should have taken the chance the first time Sans had a seizure, when Papyrus almost took him and walked away from the Lab; it may not have fixed everything, but at least it’d be a different kind of awful.

Too late for that. He can’t undo the things he didn’t do. Or do the things he undid? Whichever one. So he makes up for lost time. He tells Asgore everything. 

It takes a while. There is a great deal to tell. He has to keep pausing to text Red that he hasn’t been horribly murdered by Asgore, which gives him a moment to catch his breath, still his trembling hands, and wipe the tears off his face. When it’s over, he wants nothing so much as a glass of water and another painkiller.

Finally, when they’ve sat quietly in the garden for a while as Papyrus gulped for air and tried to stop leaking, Asgore asks, “Is that everything you’d like to say?”

“Well, not forever!” Papyrus says. “Do you mean just talking out loud or does speaking in hands count as well? If so, teaching might be difficult.”

Asgore gives him that look that people do sometimes, like he’s not sure if Papyrus is trying to be funny. Then he sighs, tilting his head back to look through the glass ceiling of the atrium. Papyrus wonders if sitting like that strains his neck. His horns look rather heavy.

“I am truly sorry for what you and your brother went through,” Asgore says. The apology loses some of its impact on account of being delivered to the ceiling. “I should have kept better watch on what he was doing. I should have… well, it seems I should have done a great many things.”

“To be fair, there were also some things you _shouldn’t_ have done!” Papyrus says.

Another sigh, so deep that it ruffles the leaf of a nearby fern. “Yes.”

Just in case Asgore is confused, Papyrus adds, “I’m referring to the child murder.”

“I assumed so,” Asgore says. He looks at Papyrus, finally. The weight of years in his eyes seems even heavier than his horns or his crown. “Some of Doctor Gaster’s notes were found in the ruins of the lab. Not all of them, but enough to be damning. You see, it seems you and Sans weren’t the first.”

“Oh,” Papyrus says, caught off guard. It never would have occurred to him. It’s strange how he feels insulted by that. Betrayed. Not only did Gaster hurt them, but they weren’t even special. “How many?”

“Too many,” Asgore says heavily. “A dozen or so over the last hundred years, at the very least. Adults, at first, and then children. None that survived, it seems, or even lasted longer than a few months. I doubt he had a direct hand in their deaths, or he would have gained LV, but he was responsible nonetheless.”

“Of course he was responsible!” Papyrus snaps. “Do you mean to tell me if he had killed Sans with his pills or his machines that it wouldn’t have counted? Why on earth didn’t the judge think what he’d done was bad enough to warn us? Isn’t that what it’s for?”

“LV has little room for ethical nuance, I’m afraid,” Asgore says. He pinches the bridge of his nose like he has a headache. “The judge is an imperfect tool, but it’s the one we have.”

“My brother is not a tool,” Papyrus says tightly. Then he reconsiders. “Perhaps in the colloquial sense, sometimes, but--”

“Well, golly, of course he isn’t a tool,” Asgore says with such genuine puzzlement that all Papyrus’s bristles unbristle themselves. “Sans is a person. He’s my friend, or so I’d like to think. People aren’t things to be used and then discarded. That’s where Gaster lost his way.”

“I would’ve thought he lost his way at the unethical experimentation,” Papyrus says. “Did the notes say why he did this?”

Asgore sinks back against the bench. He takes up most of it by himself, and Papyrus is a little glad he has a convenient seat prearranged, what with the wheelchair. Wearily, Asgore says, “He was never a particularly, er, warm person to begin with, but the war changed him. He grew colder. More clinical. So many of us died, back then. So few of the humans.”

“The ideal scenario would be no one dying,” Papyrus says with some asperity. “Not only the side we don’t like.”

For a moment Papyrus is braced for the king to say something condescending about war, like wanting everyone to live is a ridiculous and childish thing, but Asgore makes a sound that’s a little too wounded to be a laugh. “If more of us thought like you or Frisk, then we all would have been much better off, Papyrus.”

Something like guilt prickles along the back of Papyrus’s neck. He shrugs it off. The fight with Gaster didn’t end the way Papyrus hoped, but in the end, there was nothing they could have done. It had been over from the moment Gaster refused to go quietly. Papyrus couldn’t save him from the consequences of his own bad decisions. He’d tried.

If Gaster lived, Sans couldn’t. Papyrus is sorry Gaster died, but… well, not _that_ sorry. It’s not kind and it’s not great, but it’s true.

“Well, yes,” Papyrus says, after far too long a pause. “I am very great.”

“Indeed you are,” Asgore says. “I don’t carve shrubberies in the shape of just anyone’s head, after all.”

Despite everything, Papyrus preens a little. Praise is praise, after all, and it’s nice to be appreciated. Especially when he feels grimy and tired and sad. “I know. You need to freshen that up soon, by the way; Shrubbery Me’s face is growing stubble. Anyway, you were saying a thing.”

That makes Asgore’s smile fade. He sighs again. “When we lost the war, Gaster took it rather badly. I assumed it was because so many people had died and that we’d lost our freedom. Gerson, the captain of the Guard at that time, said it was simply wounded pride. From what I saw in those notes and what you’ve told me, I think he saw more clearly than I did. I should’ve listened.”

“Believing in people isn’t a bad thing, your fluffiness,” Papyrus says. “It’s just, you know, the occasional visit to the lab to check for marrow stains and screaming children might’ve been a good idea?”

“So it seems,” Asgore says with a wince. “Even when the rest of us were simply trying to piece together a new life, he was planning ways to win the next war. It was Tori-- er, Toriel who lost her patience and put an end to it. Not gently, either. She told him to concentrate on taking care of the people we had left. For a thousand years, I thought he did. And then my children...”

The words fade away, scattering like dust. Asgore closes his eyes, covering them with one big hand, and exhales. When he speaks, his voice is steady. “I apologize. It’s rather late.”

Gingerly, Papyrus pats Asgore’s arm. “Do you want a handkerchief?”

“No, thank you,” Asgore says. He clears his throat. “Toriel left. I declared war. And since another war was coming, Gaster came to me with plans. I trusted his judgement, and I gave him leave to do whatever he thought was best. Like a fool.”

Papyrus fidgets, wishing badly that he had both hands to wring together. There is a knot around his soul, tightening. “What plans?”

“He wanted to create better soldiers and better defenses,” Asgore says, a furrow between his brows like it’s hard for him to remember the conversation that ultimately led to this: Gaster dead, nearly taking Sans with him, and Papyrus and Edge badly hurt. To them, it means everything. To Asgore, it was just another briefing. Another report he neglected to read. “He had some idea for injecting determination drawn from a human soul, to make us harder to kill and able to do more damage. That’s where Doctor Alphys got the inspiration for her experiments, I imagine.”

Papyrus thinks of the amalgamates, forever melting in on themselves. If Gaster hadn’t wanted to wait until Papyrus hit his full height, if Sans hadn’t gotten them both out, if Papyrus hadn’t been such a failure by Gaster’s standards... 

Faintly, Papyrus says, “I see.”

Asgore gives him a concerned look. “We don’t have to talk about this if--”

“I want to know!” Papyrus says, a little too loud and a little too desperate. His hands have closed into fists just to remind himself of the comforting solidity of his un-melted bones, and his injured arm throbs like a strobe light in one of those bars he went to with his kinky friends. He swallows and adds, “I deserve to know.” 

“Of course you do,” Asgore says. 

(All right, yes, it still stings that Sans didn’t tell him. It probably will for a while. Papyrus loves his brother dearly, and he understands Sans’s intentions. But in Sans’s desperation to fix things he didn’t break, he ended up breaking things that weren’t already broken.)

(And yet if Papyrus was the one who remembered everything and he thought he could spare Sans the pain of knowing what Gaster did to them, can he truly say he wouldn’t be tempted to make the same mistake? He doesn’t know.)

Papyrus gives a jerky nod. “Yes! So. Er. What other horrible science things did he have planned?”

“He had this idea for… oh, what did he call it?” Asgore frowns. “A tether. Something to bind two souls together so that if one fell below zero HP, the other soul could pull them back from the brink of death. It’s a shame that Gaster only managed to make the connection work one way. Imagine the lives that could be saved by such a thing. It wouldn’t make up for the pain he caused you, I know, but--”

He continues on. Papyrus isn’t listening.

How many times had Sans survived injuries that should have killed him? Tripping over the dog and falling down five steps. Getting choked by Red and by the other Undyne. Getting sick, so very sick and so very often. His soul cracking four times. Having half of his life torn away from him when Gaster stabbed himself and then half again when Sans touched the flame to Gaster’s soul. And every time, every single time, being saved by a mere fraction of his single precious HP. 

Asgore is right. It could save lives, if someone with actual ethics took a look at Gaster’s notes and tried to repeat the process in a less destructive way. Of course, they would want to examine Sans to see what had been done to him, what they needed to improve and how to duplicate the results. More doctors, more tests, more labs and white coats, more marrow samples, always more. As if he hasn’t given enough.

If Asgore asked, Sans would refuse. Loudly. But Papyrus knows his brother; he would always wonder in the dark hours of the night how many lives he could have saved if he’d been willing to carve off another piece of himself. It would haunt him. If Asgore applied just a little pressure--

There’s a keen light in Asgore’s eyes. He’s watching Papyrus very, very closely.

Strange. Usually Papyrus’s ironic comeuppance doesn’t come so immediately after he wonders if he would have made the same mistakes as Sans. At least he has his answer. Maybe it won't be forever, but for now...

Papyrus smiles at Asgore and says, “It is a shame, isn’t it? I suppose Gaster wasn’t as clever as he thought he was.”

He doesn’t know if Asgore believes him. He knows he’s not a very good liar. For a moment, he worries. Asgore has been known to do terrible things for what he thinks is the greater good, and Papyrus has already had to punch one person to within an inch of their life tonight. He’s not really in the mood. For one thing, he’d have to do it with his nondominant hand.

But Asgore inclines his head, accepting that without any punching at all. “I suppose it’s for the best. The last attempt we made to cheat death didn’t end as we’d hoped.”

Papyrus questions the use of the plural in that sentence, seeing as nobody asked him whether Alphys should try a little impromptu experimentation on Fallen monsters, but he nods like he agrees. “If death catches you checking too many times, I hear they break your kneecaps. Or perhaps I’ve just been talking to Cherry too much?”

“He does tend to make an impression,” Asgore says. He considers Papyrus. “Are you in pain?”

“No,” Papyrus says without thinking, but his broken bones pulse dully with an exhausting kind of agony. This isn’t the first time he’s broken a bone; it’s not even the first time he had his bones broken by Gaster. But two complete fractures at once is a little excessive. He sighs, grudgingly following the advice he always gives Sans re: not lying about being in pain. “I mean, yes, but it’s tolerable.”

“I’ve kept you longer than I meant to,” Asgore says. “I’m sure you’d like to be with Sans right now. Forgive me.”

“Of course I do,” Papyrus says, because that is what he does. He forgives people when they make mistakes. Nothing is going to take that from him; he won’t let Gaster change who he is. But forgetting is another matter entirely. He is done with forgetting.

Stricken, Asgore says, “No, no, I meant forgive me for taking up so much of your time! It’s, er, a colloquialism. I won’t ask you to forgive me for failing you and your brother.”

“That’s considerate of you, but I’m doing it anyway,” Papyrus says. “What about the notes? Can I see them?”

Asgore frowns, his head cocking to one side in a way that reminds Papyrus of Red. He decides to never, ever tell Red he thought they were in any way alike; Red wouldn’t react well. “Do you truly want to?”

“I don’t know! Maybe! Not really! Yes!” Papyrus says. His fingers curl into fists again without his permission, and it hurts. Wincing, he forces himself to relax. “If I could just know why, maybe it would be easier?”

Which isn’t true, because Papyrus thinks he might already know why. Gaster did it because he hated to lose. He wanted to prove to everyone that he was the cleverest, the best, the brightest. The greatest. And the weight of that knowledge sits in Papyrus’s soul like a pebble in his boots, rubbing his bones raw.

“You don’t have to decide that tonight,” Asgore says. “Consider it for a few days, will you not? If you’d still like to see the notes when things have calmed down a little, they’re yours. It’s your choice. Too many choices have been taken from you already, I think.”

That acknowledgement deflates the last bubble of resentment lurking in Papyrus’s soul. He relaxes and even manages to offer Asgore a smile that doesn’t try to crawl off his face in silent protest. “Thank you, your fluffiness.”

“It’s the least I can do,” Asgore says, watching as Papyrus disables the wheelchair’s parking brake. “And if you or your family need anything at all, call me. I’ll do what I can.”

His family.

During sleepless nights in the Lab when Sans was sick from the pills, listening to his brother’s labored breathing in sheer terror that it might abruptly stop, Papyrus dreamed up all kinds of fanciful scenarios about being saved. Maybe their parents would come and find them, saying they never meant to leave and it was all a mistake. Maybe a teacher would see through the things Papyrus couldn’t bring himself to say. Maybe a kind stranger would stumble into the Lab and help them. Anyone. Anything.

To be honest, he wasn’t expecting Edge and Red. He’s not sure how he possibly could have. Yes, perhaps it took a little longer than he would have preferred, but on the other hand, Papyrus doubts any other kind of savior would be willing to let him borrow their advanced dating manual and leather pants. Or sit with him on the couch watching pirated episodes of America's Next Top Model at 3 AM. Or make his brother quite so happy. In any case, he wouldn’t trade them for the world.

“Thank you, King Fluffybuns,” Papyrus says, grasping the wheels of the chair with blue magic to start the long trek back to Edge’s room. “But I think we’ll be fine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: references to child abuse, medical abuse, unethical medical experimentation, offscreen deaths (including of children) because of said experimentation, references to the human-monster war in canon, and body horror.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [One more thing](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24947743) by [AshTheRat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AshTheRat/pseuds/AshTheRat)
  * [ATTL: Shorts](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25670518) by [Tsaiko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tsaiko/pseuds/Tsaiko)




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